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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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My Counterfeit

by Judge Clark

It was during a tour in North Germany, that I made the acquaintance of Mortimer Graham. The tie of fellow-countrymen between people meeting in a strange land, is, itself, almost equivalent to friendship. With this to begin with, Mortimer and I soon became not only friends but intimates. We bore, withal, so strong a personal resemblance that we were called doubles, and were constantly mistaken one for the other.

There were no secrets between us. We exchanged histories without reserve. I even made him the confidant of my engagement to Maud Temple, a beautiful heiress to whom I had been betrothed almost from childhood.

My friend and I were both ardent sportsmen, and the country abounding in game, we made many excursions together.

One day we gave chase to a wild boar, a magnificent beast, a trophy to be proud of if we succeeded in his capture.

“Take that way!” shouted Mortimer, who knew the forest better than I, pointing to a narrow path that diverged through the trees, “and I’ll keep this. It’ll go hard but one of us gets a shot.”

I dashed at full speed in the direction indicated, and had gone a quarter of a mile, perhaps, when with a suddenness that threw him almost on his haunches, my horse stopped and stood trembling with fright. An undergrowth of bushes, too slight to impede his progress, was the only cause apparent for this unexpected halt. Before I could examine if there was any other, Mortimer Graham came galloping along a path which crossed mine at the point… 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?