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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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Under Suspicion

CHAPTER I. THE ARREST.

“Uncle Joseph, will you see to the luggage?”

“Certainly, madam,” I replied. I always called my brother’s second wife “madam;” we never quarreled but each thought that the other was the most disagreeable person in the universe; and as we each knew what the other thought, it may be imagined our intercourse was not of a very cordial kind.

I did see to the luggage, and then took tickets for the party for the York Express by the Great Northern Railway.

Fortunately we had a compartment to ourselves, that is, Mrs. Webster, my niece Clara, and myself.

“Clara, my dear, you look as ill as you can look, no one would think that to-morrow was your wedding-day.”

“Do I look ill, mamma?” said Clara, dreamily.

“Yes, my dear, and wretched too. I wonder you’ve not more sense at your age, a girl of twenty-five, and breaking her heart for love of a man who for four years has taken not the slightest notice of you.”

“Why, it was one of the conditions, Mrs. Webster, that he should not write,” I exclaimed.

Clara said nothing, but looked her thanks at her old uncle.

“However, Uncle Joseph, he ought to have come back and taken his dismissal quietly. I have no patience with these poor men blighting a girl’s chance of getting well settled in life in this way; however, thank Goodness, it’s all over now, the four years are gone this three months, and tomorrow you will be the happy wife of a man whose age will command your respect, and whose position will secure you every comfort.”

“And one, mamma,… 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?