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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 Detective’s Experience


From August 1868 to November 1869, the Daily Picayune published an installment of A Detective’s Experience featuring detectives Mr. F—— and Mr. I—— almost every Sunday in its The City section of the paper.

Click here to redirect to “A Detective’s Story,” published on August 2, 1868.

Click here to redirect to “A Touch of Romance,” published on August 9, 1868.

Click here to redirect to “A Detective’s Reminiscence,” published on August 16, 1868.

Click here to redirect to “A Woman’s Revenge,” published on August 23, 1868. 

Click here to redirect to “A Den of Phantoms,” published on August 30, 1868.

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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?

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