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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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An Unexplained Mystery

The following narrative was prepared originally—not for publication, but as a report to be laid before the police. The facts of the case having, however, entirely baffled detection, and the fate of the mysterious lady still being unknown, it has been thought best to give the story to the public in this form, in the hope that it may meet the eye of some one who shall at last be able to throw some light upon the matter.

STATEMENT OF ARTHUR LOVELL.

Five summers ago, when the civil war was raging at its height, and communication between North and South was difficult and uncertain, I left the city to spend the hot months at a hotel on Staten Island. My business was very absorbing, and I could there have the benefit of country air, and yet be in town every day. The house where I took up my abode was filled with a gay set of New Yorkers, of whom I saw very little, the daylight hours being passed in the city, and evenings spent in either visiting my friends or in solitary meditation over a pipe.

Thus some two weeks had glided away, when one night I went out to dine in town, and so reached my summer quarters at an unusually late hour. The front of the house was quite deserted; I heard sounds of music and dancing from the drawing-room, and turned aside into a small parlor where I generally found quiet. There, beside the table, reading by the shaded light, sat a lady whom I had never seen.

At my entrance she raised her head from her book and looked at me. That one glance haunts me yet. In that second of time a whole new world seemed to open before me, and I, who had never felt any interest in a woman, was from… 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?