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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 Detective’s Story

Men are often amazed at the talent and cunning that experienced villains employ in carrying forward their plans of plunder and crime. And it is not ungrateful to our feelings, when we find officers of justice resorting to a measure of talent and cunning even greater than their own to arrest and bring to punishment these desperadoes of crime. The following incident in New York ‘police life,’ taken from the ‘Curiosities of Crime,’* is a case in point on this subject. A “Detective” tells the story as follows:

Several years ago I had with much difficulty arrested a clerk in a leading jewelry house, who for a long time had not only successfully purloined from his employers, but had successfully diverted suspicion from himself. He made no confession when apprehended, and was very sullen; but I got facts enough to give me a clue that the property he had taken was sold to the Ehrwitz Brothers, who for a series of years had defied by their “finesse” all the exertions of police and magistrates. After commitment he was ‘habeas corpused’ – plague on those bothersome writs! Instead of being helps to justice, as in olden times, they had got to be mischievous, and often times – as in the case I now speak of – mere dodges to help an escape. Being somewhat his criminal guardian, I was selected to care for him on his way to the judge’s chambers and back again. The argument over, he was remanded; for there was nothing in the points made ‘for the liberty of this citizen,’ as the counselor with the bombast contended.

Just at the corner of Leonard and Elm streets, as we were going to the Tombs, two intensely countrified fellows came along, and as quick as lightening seized me by each arm, and as quickly my prisoner cut and ran towards Broadway. The thing was so bold and audacious, I was for a moment paralyzed, and they held tightly, too, I assure you. In an instant there was a crowd. “Help me,” I… 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?