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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 Lawyer's Story

Twelve weary months had crept by since I had pressed my trying examination and had been admitted to the bar. I hired a cozy little office in a building filled with scores of prominent law firms. After arranging my well-stocked library I nailed up a new sign among the rest and waited for my clients to appear. —It soon became a sad trial of patience.

Among the many brilliant lights of the day my own name passed unnoticed.

Day after day, and month after month, I attended the courts or passed the time in pursuing celebrated trial cases. Like Micawber, I was waiting for something to turn up. The small capital with which I had started was dwindling away at an alarming pace, and, as yet, I saw no prospective fee.

One pleasant afternoon, Stanley Ferris, a young lawyer, who, like myself, was unwillingly idle, dropped in to see me.

“What news, Jack?” he asked carelessly.

“Same as usual,” I responded despondently. “I’ve a notion to pack off in the wilderness for a few weeks. Everybody is out of town, and there is little… 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?