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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 Camp Adventure

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

It was in the latter part of September that Ben Clark and myself started off for the lakes on a fishing excursion—those lakes which form the head waters of the Androscoggin, and of which the Umbagagog is most generally known, because it is about the only one of the lot which has a pronounceable name. On our way up, and after we had left the settlements of men behind us, we met Whit. Greeley, and we tried to persuade him to go with us; but he said he had other fish to catch than trout. Whit. was at that time sheriff, and a very excellent officer he made. A revolution in the political wheel has since tipped him over into private life, but I doubt if they will ever find a better man for that post than he. To be sure, he wasn’t so large as some men—in fact, he was rather smaller than the average of men—he was smaller in size, if anything, than was that brother of his who got tipped into office when he fell out. But for all this he was a smart officer; for of all his inches he was every inch a man. He was like one of those old, round Dutch cheeses—“good and strong all through.” Ben used to laugh at him because he was so small and “Dutchy;” but to tell the plain truth Whit. had the most to laugh at, for of all the big, overfed, fat, lazy mortals that I ever fell in with, I think Old Ben was the “beatermost.” However, they were both good fellows, and both particular friends of mine, and Ben had been kind enough to accompany me on the present trip on the express condition that I should find the team, carry all luggage to be carried, and do all the cooking, he reserving the right to ride over all the rough places, to catch fish if he could, and to eat as much as he wanted. If I hadn’t loved him for his thousand-and-one good qualities, I wouldn’t have borne him as I did.

But to return to the little sheriff: When we… 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?