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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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The Mysterious Blood Stain

In the year 185- I was in command of the Dolphin, a fine bark of six hundred tons. We had been on a whaling voyage, and had obtained an unusually good cargo of oil. With our course laid for home, the crew in good health, and a fair prospect of percentage money on the cargo, what more could we want to keep the song and the jest upon the lips of the crew.

One night, about eleven o’clock, I was sitting at the upper end of my cabin table, consulting a chart on which the vessel’s course was laid down. I had been reading Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ and the horrible nature of the work had aroused my sensitive feelings to such an extent that I had determined to try how far a cigar and a walk on deck would steady my nerves. Just as I was about rising from my chair to go on deck, I noticed a figure descending the companionway before me. A single glance told me that it was not one of the crew. Slowly he descended the steps, grasping the hand-rail to support himself, as if he were too feeble to descend without support.

His feet were bare, while his head was enveloped in a piece of old sail-cloth in place of a cap. His left arm hung by his side, carefully rolled up in his coat, which had evidently been taken off for that purpose, and the arm itself appeared to be broken. Quietly and without uttering a word he approached me, and at last he sat down at the end of the table.

He then slowly raised his head, and a sight was presented to my astonished gaze, the like of which I hope I may never see again. The features had been good and regular, but now the cheeks were sunken and hollow; the teeth, white and even, were firmly set together; the thin, parched lips were drawn back from them. The eyes were as black as coal, but sunk far back into the head, and I saw they were fixed on me with a dull, unmeaning stare. The figure now stood up just opposite to me, and I felt myself spell bound… 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?