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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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Killing an Old Man

It was shortly after the opening of the great exhibition of 1851 that I set sail from England for the gold fields of New South Wales, with a heart brim full of hope and expectation, and pockets, boxes and portmanteaus made of sufficiently capacious dimensions to hold any amount of the precious metal (when found,) in addition to my somewhat scanty wardrobe.

Well do I remember the packing of that black leather portmanteau, and the swallow-tailed coat that my mother would insist upon putting in, although, having a presentiment that such articles of apparel were not comme il faut at the gold fields, I vigorously resisted the measure. I also remember the many pairs of warm socks that had been manufactured with sisterly affection and gray worsted, by the five girls—from Julia the eldest, aged nineteen, down to Susan the youngest, just turned nine. Finally, I have a distinct memory of how my maiden aunt, on the strength of her sixteen stone weight, jumped upon the aforesaid portmanteau and performed a kind of war-dance thereon, so as to enable Tom the groom, and Mary the house-maid, to strap and lock it; and how, after many tears being shed by my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and my maiden aunt in particular, I was whisked away to the railway station, in order to catch the 9.45 A. M. train for London.

I will not dwell on the voyage out, because it was very much like other voyages. Suffice it to say that in just a hundred days we arrived at Sidney, the capital of New South Wales, and here I discovered that the favorite gold field of the day was at Ophir, near Bathurst, 145 miles up the country. Here some tremendous finds had lately been made, and people had been turning up nuggets like an Irishman shovels up potatoes.

In due time, after a fortnight’s weary journey in an ox… 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?