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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

Select Story

The Recognition

by Amy Graham

“WE are all so sorry!”

Emily Dunbar, looking through the mist that tears made over her dark eyes, saw faces round her that fully certified to the truth of the exclamation.

She was standing in the broad hall of the “Young Ladies’ Seminary,” of Oak Hall, the centre of a group of sympathizing schoolmates who had assembled to bid her farewell. Only one hour before a telegraph, cruel in its brevity, had summoned her home to her father’s death-bed, and before her melancholy packing was finished a second brief message told her she was too late for one parting word, and could only see the face she loved still in death. Her breaking heart silenced all words of answer as her companion’s words of sorrow fell upon her ears; she could only grasp the hands extended to her in close clasps of friendship, and sob broken words of thanks. One hand, the last extended, lingered long in hers, and Fanny Watson’s low, sweet voice broke the stillness that followed the departure of the others from the hall.

“Dear Emily, I have no words to tell you how I grieve for you! But you will consider me your best friend always, will you not? You will come to me if you need any service, Emily?”

… 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?