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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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A Bit of Detective Business

IT was at a time when I was engaged as a local reporter upon a daily newspaper in a Western city that an event occurred which was destined to have a remarkable influence upon my future welfare.

In as few words as possible, I will endeavor to give the reader an account of this event, and of the consequences which grew out of it, premising that, although I flatter myself that I can do up a horrible murder, or terrible conflagration, or rightful accident, in a tolerably artistic manner, story writing is entirely out of my line. As, however, in this narrative there is no occasion for flights of fancy, it being my intention simply to tell a plain, unvarnished tale, I am encouraged to believe that my lack of imaginative power will not interfere with the interest of my sketch. It is an old saying that truth is stranger than fiction, and the circumstances which I am about to relate will prove a practical exemplification of the fact.

Among the most exclusive families in the city to which I have referred was that of Mrs. Fromby, the widow of an individual who had commenced life as the proprietor of a low grog-shop, but who, by operations in real estate and other fortunate speculations, had succeeded in becoming very wealthy. He was accused of being engaged in numerous transactions of a very doubtful character during his lifetime, but as he died… 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?