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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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Leaf the Sixth

The Bowie Knife Sheath

by John Williams

My wife possessed a very dear friend named Ellen Braddock. They were school-fellows together, although my wife was considerably the elder of the two. There is quite a romantic episode connected with the life of this young girl, in which I played quite a conspicuous part and which I am about to relate to the reader.

Ellen Braddock’s father resided at Athens, just opposite the city of Hudson. He was a very wealthy gentleman, but very proud and aristocratic. It is but right that I should inform the reader that I married considerably above my station, and it was owing to this fact that I could claim acquaintance with Ellen; as for her father I had never seen him, nor do I suppose he would have noticed me even if I had ever been introduced to him; with his daughter, however, it was different, whenever she came to New York, she called to visit us, and spent many hours in our company. One day she called on us, and informed us that she was to embark for South America, where she was going for the benefit of her health.

She sailed in the Irene. A twelve-month passed away, and nothing was heard of the vessel. It was supposed that… 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?