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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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The Night of the French Ball

by Portland Wentforth

A detective is well used to the unusual and to meeting as cold facts what, when told, seems a tissue of the wildest improbabilities. During my experience I had one case which for certain strange features I have never had surpassed. It seemed to make itself into my hand as clear as a first lesson in reading for a child, until almost the end, and then came points which are hard enough to unravel.

It occurred years ago, on the evening of the French Ball. I was free, and attended it. It was the usual thing. The Academy of Music was filled with gay women and young fellows about town. By twelve o'clock the wanton hilarity was beginning to get well under way. The women were leaning heavily on their partners' arms and indulging in loud laughter, while the steps were more vigorous than decorous. The high-kicking had begun. My attention had been particularly drawn to one young woman. She was not very tall, but was beautifully made. She was dressed like a Columbine. Her short, pointed skirt of yellow silk and blue velvet came hardly to her knees, and the waist was quite décolleté. On her blond hair was perched a conical cap with tiny silver bells on it. Around her face was wound a piece of white lace to serve as a mask. I noticed her because she was such an exquisitely graceful dancer. Her small feet, cased in gold shoes with high heels, twinkled as prettily as possible as they lightly touched the waxed floor. The dancing was an intense pleasure to her evidently. She could hardly keep her feet still during any pause in which she had not to move. They would beat impatiently upon the floor, and she would toss one in front of the other and sway her sinuous little figure, impatiently waiting till her turn to dance came again.

As I was standing near the door looking at her a party… 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?