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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 Art Detective

[Paris correspondence New York Herald]

In Paris there is an art studied and carried to a perfection unknown in any other country; I mean the art detective, in the practical application of criminal jurisprudence. As a medical man, M. Tardieu has accomplished in this respect real miracles, tracing out the most mysterious and hidden crimes by indications which remind one of the scent of the savage or the inscrutable tact which he displays in hunting a victim. This difficulty in tracing crime, and its successful results, forms the greatest part of the interest which popularly attaches to evil deeds; and now that a murderer is more easily detected than of old, criminals go more warily to work, and the result is more terrible and more romantic crimes than ever. There is preserved in the office of the Cour d'assises de Calvados, a handkerchief which once in such an affair cost two men their lives. I will give the story as told in a newspaper. Several years ago in Caen the shop of a Jeweler was robbed. The poor man surprised them, gave chase, and was brutally murdered by them in the street. Everything was done to detect the criminals without avail. The great Detective Melin, who brought Charpentier from America, tried and failed. There was at Caen a central commissaire of police, a Monsieur Ducheylard, brother-in-law of the Duke of Malakoff, and this man applied himself steadily to the work. The thieves had left a jimmy (rosignol), a simple iron bar, and a handkerchief.

Some time after Monsieur Ducheylard found that in a low drinking house, where rooms were also hired, two men had entered themselves as August Chemist, merchant, from Mulhouse, and Joan Graft, merchant, from Strasburg. Their passports were perfectly right.

Still it seemed strange to M. Ducheylard that two merchants, respectable men, should board at such a “crib” as this was.… 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?