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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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STORIES BY A DETECTIVE

The Latimer Robbery

“One day, some years ago, Mr. Latimer called upon me. He was a wealthy man, a land owner, engaged in several kinds of business and among others in the sale of real-estate. He said that on the previous night the sum of $7,255 had been stolen from a room adjoining his bedroom. He had left it there in the evening, because it had been too late to deposit it at the bank. I asked him where, from whom, and in what sums the money had been received, and I ascertained from him that he had been collecting house rents, a part he had taken for a load of pressed hay sold in Jersey City, and another sum had come to him from the country. At my request he gave me a specification of each of the separate payments, also the names of the parties who had paid them, and the considerations. I also asked him whether any other persons were present when he received the money. In reply to this question he told me when he took the money for the hay several persons were standing by, some were customers, others working people, a few well, but rather flashily dressed young men. Latimer had taken out his pocket-book in which there was already a considerable sum of money, and opened it to put in the amount just received. He had put this back into an inner pocket of his waistcoat, and as soon as he reached home, he put it away in the safe. After this interview Mr. Latimer left me and I promised to visit him another day at his house, and take a look at… 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?