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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 Culprit Judge

A Tale Of The Bench and Bar

"In one of the Western States I was once a prosecuting attorney. The settler's axe was then familiar music, and the prairies away from the woodland had not yet heard the scream of the steam-whistle. All branches of society, of trade, business, and professions were in a transition state. Of course the judges were not men of vast learning or of rare character; and, lest I appear vain, I may add, that the lawyers were by no means Chief-Justice Taneys!

The Judge who traveled circuit with us in the counties round about the city of — had been in early life a horse-jockey, and had picked up a large amount of tact, knowledge of men, and of human nature, and of social motives that was of much use to him in his legal walk. At the West he had been a member of the first Constitutional Convention in our State, and, being a good talker and of quick natural intellect, had shone in the debates.

Of course it was natural that, as he made the law, he should claim to be able to expound it. And at the first election after the State was admitted he was chosen a Judge.

I never liked him. With all his affability and apparent deference of manner, there was in his composition an understrata of cunning that I suspected and became wary of. When I was chosen peoples' solicitor he sought my confidence, but I repelled it, and, except in court, we were little together. Many a time on the civil side has he given me a favorable charge on facts, or acquiesced in my law when I felt that I was wrong. Nor could I fathom why he thus sought to get the winning side of me.

I suspected him of knavery. When prisoners were convicted, and he had the discretion of punishment, his sentences were oddly inconsistent. He fined when he should have imprisoned, and confined when a nominal punishment would have answered 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?