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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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[Written for the Flag of our Union]

The Dedbroke Mystery

by Frances Mary Schoolcraft

The Dedbroke Mystery was a very complicated one, and was, in fact, two distinct mysteries, which finally merged into one. The one that had the most definite shape, originated in the village of Swinebourne. Swinebourne was not far from the sea, and rather above the head of sloop navigation on the Swinebourne River, though small craft did occasionally come up to the village.

A mystery in Swinebourne was a remarkable thing in itself, apart from the circumstances that constituted it; for, generally speaking, nothing was a mystery there. Everybody knew everything about everybody and everything. Outsiders declared that it was a mystery how the settled preacher of the gospel contrived to live, with a wife and seven children, on his small salary; and it really did seem, not merely a mystery, but a positive miracle. But the congregation never cared to raise the question, for fear they should feel compelled to raise the salary as a decent consequence; and the parson himself probably thought it was safer to appeal to Heaven than to the generosity of his flock. But this is a digression.

The mystery had as befitting a local habitation as any one could have selected for it—a deserted house. The house was the old Dedbroke House, which stood on the old Dedbroke Place, a farm of considerable extent, lying on the banks of the river, nearly three-quarters of a mile beyond the village, towards the sea. The farm was a good one, as… 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?