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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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A Capture in Canada

I am not Mr. Pollaky of Paddington Green, neither am I Inspector Webb, nor Detective Bull of the City force; my status in society is that of a banker’s clerk. I hold an appointment in a Midland Counties firm, which I entered upon five-and-twenty years ago. I had reached what is termed the “ripe middle age,” when some months since the even current of my life was interrupted by the following event.

The establishment with which I have been so long associated is well known, and has gained a reputation by the quiet, respectable character of its business transactions. It does not indulge in speculative ventures, and hence has escaped many of the misfortunes and missed no little of the agitation which some banking firms have had to encounter. Occasionally we have been startled by the presentation of a bad note, a forged check, and other cunningly devised schemes of well-practised swindlers to impose on our simplicity and credulity, which circumstances have forced us into the excitement of judicial investigations. Thus from time to time, I was brought in contact with some of the most celebrated detectives of the day. I still remember the feelings of admiration with which I witnessed the skill and sagacity of such men as John Forrester, Leadbeater, the Bow Street officer, Inspector Whicher, and other police officers, in tracking and detecting a swindler. At that period I little dreamt that my quiet life would be disturbed by an eventful episode, such as I am about to relate.

On the morning of the 28th September, 186- , I was at my post as usual, when a message from the bank manager summoned me to his presence. I saw at a glance, on entering the room, that something had happened. My chief informed me that a customer of the bank, whom, for obvious reasons, I will call Mr. Hooker, had absconded. I was aware, not only that he was under an engagement to liquidate a considerable claim we had… 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?