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American Detective Fiction

Posting all Detective Fiction
Prior to Conan Doyle

Fully Searchable

It is the mission of the Westminster Detective Library to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891).

We have posted our working bibliography and will add full-text copy of its entries as we prepare them.We have also included important British publications, which are indicated with an asterisk in the bibliography. We welcome comments and solicit both additional bibliographical entries and texts.

Editors:
LeRoy Lad Panek
Mary M. Bendel-Simso

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The Lock Of Hair

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The Murder At Haughton

by Mary C. Vaughan

“I thought you would have rung your bell before this time, ma’am. I guess your fire is e’ema,pst out,” said Hetty Sims, otherwise known as Aunt Hetty, bustling into the parlor, at twilight, or what she chose to call “early candle-lighting”. “Aint ye cold, Mis’ Sorley? There’s nothing but a few coals left.”

The figure, sitting there in the angle of the fire-place, answered not, but that fact did not daunt Aunt Hetty.

“I should have been in before,” she continued, “but s’posed ye had company. ‘Twas the minister, warn’t it? I had my ands in the bread when he knocked, or I should have gone to the door.

Still no answer.

“I guess she’s asleep,” commented Aunt Hetty, audibly; “an’ if she is, I’d better hold my tongue and not wake her. It does old folks a deal of good to sleep!”

Just at that moment the fire blazed up brightly, and Aunt Hetty turned round from her task of blowing it with her apron, to look at her beloved mistress. There was something awful in the rigid stiffness of her position. Her head had fallen forward upon her breast, one hand hung by her side, the other grasped the arm of the chair. Her features were shaded by the position in which she sat.

The fire was burning now, and as Aunt Hetty rose she put her hand upon the rug to lift herself by its aid. It splashed into a pool of something warm, wet, sticky that was oozing out upon the hearth.

“I guess the minister set his umbrella down here,” she said, and then she glanced at her hand. All the palm was covered by a dark, awful smear, and from her extended fingers dripped the clammy mass.

“Oh!” shrieked Aunt Hetty. “Law! Oh, gracious! Mis’ Sorelli! I do believe it’s blood!”

She went… Read More

Miscellany

The Detective of the Present -- Finn and Jourdan

Time was when a detective was a man who detected things. A detective is still that in some European countries; and he still detects things—in novels. There's Buckett in “Bleak House” who detects Lady Dedlook, and there's that detective in Collin’s story of the “Moon Stone,” quite a detector. New York used to have Old Hayes, who could detect a thing or two; Paris has had Vidocq, and Bow street has had Forster.* But the race has died out entirely in America, and is dying out in England.

Commissioner Jourdan, of Brooklyn, has been making an effort to raise up a detective or two and has actually produced Corr and Bill. Corr and Bill were raised to the Vidocquian task of tracing a mystic murder. Finnan is a hatter; and Finnan has been in States Prison. That ought to be enough for any detective such as Corr to concluded that Finnan did the deed. Edgar A. Poe could not reason out a conclusion clearer than that. So Corr went to where Finnan was making hats.

Is Finnan here? Yes—want to see him?