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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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The Apothecary’s Compound

From a Physician's Note-Book

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

At the age of five-and-twenty I graduated from one of the best medical schools in the country; and I do not think I stretch the truth when I say that no man had ever been more untiring in his efforts to obtain a thorough knowledge of all that should be understood by the true physician than I had been. I had entered upon my studies with a love for the profession, and as I progressed I loved it more and more; and when I finally received my diploma, and our old Professor of Anatomy and Surgery assured me that I was fit to practice anywhere, I was vain enough to believe that he spoke the truth; though now, in the prime of life, I am forced to confess that so far as the theory and practice of medicine is concerned, I have learned wonderful things since the day on which that bit of “sheep-skin” came into my hands.

With my diploma in one pocket, and a neat case of surgical instruments in another, and a black leather medicine trunk in my hand, I stopped to consider where I should settle. One of our professors advised me to go to Warrenville. He said it was a thriving place—a growing place—and he thought I might grow up with it, and, by due attention to my profession, become a very important part of it. I took his advice and went to Warrenville; and when I had had the opportunity to look about me I was perfectly satisfied with the landing I had made. The settlement was an old one; but the opening of the railroad, which had been completed only a few years before, had given a new impetus to the growth of the place; and as the town possessed one of the best water-powers in the country, that growth could not be else than permanent and healthy. There were already two physicians in the place, and there was also an apothecary and druggist who pretended to know something of… 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?