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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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A Lawyer’s Story

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

I had done all for him that I could. I had found him in prison, a friendless, broken, degraded man, charged with murder. The hand of time had touched his hair with silver, and a long course of crime and dissipation had made him almost a brute in outward appearance. He had been committed for murder, and the court had appointed me to defend him. It was a work which I did not seek, and which I would have avoided if possible, but I could not refuse the office under such circumstances. He could look to no friend for help, and no lawyer was willing to volunteer in his defense, for not only was his character notoriously bad, but the evidence against him in the present case was so direct and clear, that a defense could be but an empty form at best. And so the court appointed me to conduct the case in behalf of the prisoner, and I did not refuse.

Levi Lorler was his name, and I found him such a stranger to tones of friendship, that for a long time he refused to trust me. By degrees, however, I won his confidence, and finally he trusted me fully. I did all for him that mortal man could do, and in my plea, at his trial, I not only brought tears to the eyes of the jury, but the prisoner wept like a child. But I could not wipe out the stern evidence that appeared against him, and he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. When he knew that there was no more hope for him on earth, and that he was soon to tread the gallows, he sent for me to come and see him. I went, and found him sober and thoughtful, and wholly resigned to his fate. He declared that he had no desire to live. He would rather die than remain locked up in the dreary dungeon, and were he to be set at liberty, he would carry the brand upon his brow—the world would kick and cuff and curse him, and thus drive him to new crimes and new trials.

“I know I’ve got to die,” he… 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?