The News

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

Respectable Mr. Skimpall

“That was a blue day,” said old John Telbert, with a glance around, as much as to say:

“If you want to hear more, say so.”

“What was a blue day?” asked Dave Spang.

Old John drew a match across the sole of his moccasin, lit his corn-cob chibouque, and, after a few preparatory whiffs, answered:

“The day I got locked up in jail.”

There was a general murmur of surprise.

Having given our astonishment time to work itself in, old John proceeded:

“You see I made up my mind to move furder West. So, after sellin’ out what little I had, me and Polly and the baby pulled up stakes, and packin’ up a few light articles in a two hoss wagon, set out on our travels.

“’Twas along about noon on the second day, when four men come gallopin’ up, and filed off, two on each side, at the same time pullin’ out four pistols.

“‘Halt!’ says one of ’em.

“Now, I’d as good a rifle with me as ever drawed bead on buck or redskin, but I’d seen too many scrimmages not to know that four to one’s desp’rate odds, ’specially when they’ve got the draw on you. So, I jest asked what they wanted.

“‘You,’ says the one that’d spoke first.

“‘What for?’ said I.

“‘You know where you stopped to bait your hosses yesterday?’ said he.

“‘Yes,’ says I.

“‘Well, the money you paid there’s counterfeit, and so’s that you paid where you stopped last night?’

“‘Now I know you’re ly—jokin’,’ says I; ‘for the money I paid at both places, I got from Mr. Skimpall, the storekeeper at our crossroads, a standin’ candidate for the legislater, and the best jedge o’ money in the county. I got him to change me a… 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?