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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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Between September of 1838 and May of 1839, a series of nine numbered detective stories was published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. The series was titled “Unpublished Passages in the Life of Vidocq, the French Minister of Police” and was signed with the initials J.M.B. This series of stories was originally published in London in The Olio, London in 1832.

 

Click here to redirect to “Marie Laurent” (No. I) published in September 1838.

Click here to redirect to “Doctor D’Arsac” (No. II) published in October 1838.

Click here to redirect to “The Seducer” (No. III) published in November 1838.

Click here to redirect to “The Bill of Exchange” (No. IV) published in December 1838. 

Click here to redirect to “The Strange Discovery” (No. V) published in January 1839.

Click here to redirect to “The Gambler’s Death” (No. VI) published in February 1839.

Click here to redirect to “Pierre Louvois” (No. VII) published in March 1839.

Click here to redirect to “Jean Monette” (No. VIII) published in April 1839.

Click here to redirect to “The… 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?

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