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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

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Extensive Counterfeiting

Seizure of Fifty Thousand Dollars in Spurious Postal Currency—Arrest of the Counterfeiter—His Confession

by George McWatters

In the New York Times of November 20, 1865, we find an article with the above caption, and which we copy as below. The arrest therein spoken of created much sensation at the time, as well it might. Officer McWatters acted in the matter, not only as an ordinary member of the police force, but in the capacity of a detective, and won great credit by his sagacity.

“An important arrest was effected in Brooklyn last Tuesday, the particulars of which have been suppressed up to the present time. The Treasury Department at Washington have long been aware that the business of counterfeiting greenbacks and postal currency has been carried on to an alarming extent at different points throughout the country, but their endeavors to arrest the guilty parties have, with a few exceptions, been attended with failure, or only partial success. One exceedingly skilful engraver of bogus postal currency has been especially marked as the most dangerous operator, inasmuch as his execution was so perfect as frequently to deceive even the Government officials; and the boldness of the counterfeiter was almost as great as his skill. The man in question is an English engraver, by the name of Charles J. Roberts. The best Government detectives have been on his track for six months, without succeeding in finding him, until last Tuesday, when his arrest was effected in Brooklyn, by Messrs. R. R. Lowell and A. J. Otto, detectives in the service of the Treasury Department, with the assistance of Officer McWatters, of the Twenty-Sixth Metropolitan Precinct.

“The operations of Roberts have been mainly confined to Philadelphia, in the suburbs of which city his “money mill” was situated. The last counterfeit pieces which he made, and… 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?