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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

A Mystery, and Its Solution

by Amy Randolph

“It isn’t the value of the thing that I think so much about,” said Miss Ada Sinclair, deliberately taking off her spectacles and placing them in their black morocco case; “but it’s the feeling that I cannot fully trust those around me.”

Here was an awkward silence. Charles Sinclair, the old lady’s nephew, went on flourishing his own name with innumerable up-and-down strokes with his aunt’s big gold pen, looking annoyed the while. Did Aunt Ada mean to insinuate that she suspected him of stealing her old-fashioned garnet clasps? Sylvia Heart, the old lady’s pretty little “companion,” blushed painfully as she bent over her fine stitching, and wished that Miss Sinclair would not say such disagreeable things.

“For I’ve looked everywhere,” went on Miss Ada, “and I’m just as positive as if I was on my Bible oath, that I laid them on the dressing bureau when I came in from church. And that isn’t the only thing I’ve missed lately either; my anchor breastpin is gone, and my Irish point lace collar.”

“Hallo!” quoth Charley; “matters begin to look serious now. Have we a band of burglars among us, Aunt Ada? Sylvia, are you certain you’re not in league with a lot of discreditable fellows with black masks over their faces?”

“Charles, how can you talk so!” cried poor little Sylvia in distressed accents.

“Indeed, Charles, it is not a subject for jesting,” said Miss Sinclair, drawing herself up. “Things cannot disappear without hands, and Hannah has lived with me full five-and-twenty years, come next Christmas. And as for John the gardener, I would trust him with… 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?