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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 Jewel Thief

A London Detective’s Story

by Emerson Bennett

I received a message from the chief of police of L—, saying there was a thieving mystery to be solved in that city, which would handsomely reward the successful investigator; and if I could find time to visit that place immediately, he should be happy to confer with me, in preference to any other, as not a few of my professional exploits were already known to him.

I was flattered. I, a young man of twenty-three, to be selected by a stranger, the head of police in a distant city, in preference to all the old experienced detectives in London!

It was, indeed, something to be proud of! And yet, my vanity whispered me, the man was right—for, though young in years, I was old in human nature, and, by a sort of instinct, could scent out rascality as naturally as a hound does a fox. Mystery, moreover, exactly suited my proclivities—perplexities were my delight—and I fairly reveled in the strange, hidden, complicated and wonderful. So, of course, I resolved to go to L— at once, and I went.

“My name, sir, is James Felstone, of London!” I said, on presenting myself to Mr. Broughton, chief of police in L—.

He looked somewhat surprised, but offered his hand cordially, and said he was happy to make my acquaintance, though he had expected to see a much older person bearing a name that was already becoming somewhat famous.

“Well, so you have come to help us in this matter, that has already become such a puzzle?” he continued.

“I have come, at your request,” I replied, “to see what I can do in the affair, though I am as yet entirely ignorant of the nature of it.”

“Well, it is nothing more or less than the mysterious abstraction of jewelry,” rejoined Mr. Broughton. “Not less than twenty or thirty of our first families have lost jewels of great… 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?