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Web Site Showcases
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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How Mr. Mustell Paid His Note

by Judge Clark

“Darrell!”

It was Mr. Leatherwood’s voice from the inner office. The name called was my own; and, with the alacrity of an under clerk ambitious of promotion I responded to the summons.

“Jonah Mustell’s note fell due yesterday,” said Mr. Leatherwood, looking up as I entered. “I want you to ride over to Beechdale and present it. Of course, it won’t be paid, for, by his construction of the law-merchant, a debtor has the right to at least three distinct duns in addition to the days of grace. So the sooner we begin the better. Here’s the note, and an order on Trotter, the liveryman, for a horse.”

Mr. Leatherwood turned to his writing-desk after these instructions, and left me to follow them.

Beechdale was a country village about a dozen miles from the youthful Western city of which Mr. Leatherwood was the leading merchant.

The road had so many “forks” and turns that my head got turned at last, and in spite of my stock of itinerary information being kept replenished at regular intervals, I had the consolation, at the end of several weary hours, of finding myself many miles out of the way. Owing to which mishap it was late in the afternoon when I alighted at Mr. Mustell’s gate.

I cannot say I was won by that gentleman at first sight. There was a look of sinister cunning in his ferrety little eyes, when he met me at the door, neither agreeable nor trust-inspiring.

After an exchange of distant salutations, and on intimation from… 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?