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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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Garnet Buttons

by Captain Felix Constant

Half an hour out of New York, that is to say, long enough for the express train to have acquired the peculiar vibrating, thrilling motion peculiar to express trains, because only in them is the forward impulse steady enough and prolonged enough to pervade with equal force every particle of matter animate and inanimate from the front of the engine to the rear of the last car. The notion is, I flatter myself, an original one, and as such I generously preset it to the public, merely asking such of my readers as are gifted with a sensitive and sympathetic organization to test the matter for themselves. Meanwhile, we will return to our mutton, or rather to our lamb, for it is pretty, innocent and youthful, also sentimental and melancholy; all of which are lamblike qualities and seldom found in sheep. Her name is Marcia Brandon, and she is returning from a somewhat prolonged visit with some city cousins to her home in a large western town which we will name Io, that being as far as possible from its actual cognomen.

And why should Miss Marcia Brandon be melancholy, being, as has been stated, young, pretty and innocent? The city cousins had provided her with an elaborate lunch, two of the latest novels, shawls, foot-rug, kisses, good wishes, and invitations for next winter. She was going home to a father who idolized her, a maiden aunt who spoiled her, and two brothers who did not torment her, what more should a young lady want, given a handsome wardrobe and liberal pocket-money? She wanted—a pocket-handkerchief, and having extricated it from her traveling-bag, she withdrew in its company behind the very thickest and bluest of blue veils, and began to cry.

“I don’t care, I don’t care a single bit!” whispered this untruthful young woman, in the depths of the combined handkerchief and veil. Yes, untruthful, for if she did not care, why did she cry?… 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?