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Web Site Showcases
American Detective Fiction

Posting all Detective Fiction
Prior to Conan Doyle

Fully Searchable

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).

This site grew out of research for the anthology Early American Detective Stories (McFarland 2008) that I edited with my mentor and colleague LeRoy Lad Panek (1943-2021), winner of two Edgar awards for his contributions to the scholarly field of detective criticism. We uncovered a treasure-trove of forgotten and previously unavailable detective stories, many more than could be included in a single anthology. And so this on-going project was born.

The site includes a working bibliography; full-text copy of entries are added as they are prepared. A few stories that were published in Britain but which appear to have been previously published in America have also been included and are indicated by an asterisk in the bibliography. I welcome comments and solicit both additional bibliographical entries and texts.

Mary M. Bendel-Simso, editor

Select Story

A Story of Mystery

Who is Guilty?

by Phillip Wolf, M.D.

Capt. Travers, of the British Army, on furlough for the purpose of restoring the health he had lost in India, found himself detained at Cyprusville by a special attraction in the form of Miss Oriana Gower, to whom he had been presented by his friend, Dr. Dubois. On the day the story opens, they were to go, all of them, including Miss Gower’s uncle, Mr. Morris, with whom she was living, to visit some people in the neighborhood; but suddenly, about the time they were to start, Miss Gower asked to be excused, pleading illness. “That is no excuse for you,” Dr. Dubois said to Capt. Travers. “Morris also refused to go, but he gives a more honest reason. The truth is the people we are going to see are honored unexpectedly with the visit of a man whom Morris and his niece dislike. Why, I don’t know or care. This man is Mr. Hugo Addison, who has returned from a long pleasure voyage in his yacht, after he and his yacht were supposed to have been lost at sea; and he is the real cause why Morris and Miss Gower do not accompany us.”

“But she is really ill, Doctor,” said Travers.

“She will recover,” was the dry answer.

“Poor little thing,” Travers continued, “it worries me awfully!”

“You will recover, too,” the Doctor replied.

They both received a hearty welcome at their journey’s end from the host and his guests, and gay words and gayer laughter defied clouds and piping winds. The Doctor avoided the tempting snares that were set for him, but the moody and helpless Captain was appropriated by a vivacious blonde, who, though pretty, only wearied him. “I am so glad you have come,” she said, “your friends have kept you so secluded that I thought I should never… 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?