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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 Left-Handed Thief

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

“How many young men have been injured and perhaps ruined, by false suspicion,” remarked my mercantile friend, as we were conversing upon the subject of the panic a few evenings since. Suspicion is like an assassin in the dark; it stabs its victim and he knows not whence the blow comes. Or it may be more like a keen frost seizing upon the ears, and driving back the life-blood, and yet the poor man is totally ignorant of his situation till he comes in contact with the heat, and begins to feel the stinging pain. But I believe I never told you of the time that suspicion of evil was fastened upon me. It has nothing to do with the subject under consideration, though it serves to show how merchants lose money.

When I was a mere youth I was placed in the hands of Jacob Wharton, a merchant doing a good business. I was frugal, industrious, and faithful, and at the age of twenty-one I was advanced to the position of bookkeeper with a good salary. I had charge of the books and the safe, and all the money left over banking house was also in my care. I tried to do my duty faithfully and I think I succeeded. Mr. Wharton was a close methodical man, with a quick eye and ready understanding of business, and as I fancied he was satisfied, I felt much pleased.

I had been a book keeper a year, when I thought my employer’s manner towards me seemed changed – he began to treat me more coolly and finally I was sure he watched my movements with distrustful glances; I became nervous and uneasy, for I feared I had offended him. But the thing came to a head at length.

One evening when I was alone in the store engaged in making up my cash account, Mr. Wharton came to me with a troubled look and spoke. His voice was tremulous and I could see that he was deeply affected; he said:

“George, I am sorry for the conviction which has… 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?