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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

Select Story

Good Mr. Sprue

“Hurry up there and get your tickets, gentlemen!” shouted a man in a blue coat and brass buttons, with the company’s badge on his lapel.

There was a general scramble for the head of the line, and a hurried falling back to the less enlightened places by those who failed to secure the first.

I never had any good luck in gaining a good place in a crowd. A tall man with a high hat, always would go between me and whatever sight was to be seen. If it rained at the circus, the inevitable fat woman with the green umbrella, always bounded my horizon. In the rush to hear a popular preacher I have been fortunate enough to secure a camp stool at the far end of the room, but most commonly have to put up with “standing room” in the third or fourth rank, catching here and there a word of the discourse, but not a glimmer of the sense.

This time I feared as usual. Elbowed out at every attempt to gain a better lodgement, I found myself at last at the extreme end of the queue.

“Hurry up, I say!” kept shouting he in blue and brass.

But in spite of all, the line shortened slowly. I was getting nervous. The next day was Thanksgiving; which I had agreed to spend at Deacon Patchin’s between whose daughter Polly and myself certain tender negotiations were then in active progress. To miss the train involved the choice of either giving up my visit or waiting several hours and arriving just in time to find Polly in the pouts and taking a longing look at the cold remains of that special turkey of whose growth in fatness Polly’s postscripts had kept me from time to time advised.

“Hurry up! Less than a minute till the gate closes!” admonishes the blue and brazen official, as at last I reached the ticket window.

“Ticket to Hugginsport,” I said hurriedly.

“Two dollars!” replied the ticket man, slapping down his stamp on a piece… 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?