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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 Dumb Countersign

A Deputy’s Story

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

In the Summer of 1843 Jackson County was infested by a gang of desperadoes that for a time threatened to overturn the whole arrangement of social and domestic affairs. Horses were carried off; cattle and sheep were stolen; houses were broken into and robbed; travelers were waylaid and relieved of their valuables; and in some instances still grosser outrages were committed. Our sheriff call us, his deputies, together, and told us that something must be done to put a stop to this dreadful state of things. We held a long conference, and the separated and set out upon our travels, some going East, some, West, some North, and some South, in search of the marauding ruffians. We traveled two or three weeks—traveled all over the county; we met wayfaring men of whom we made all sorts of inquiries; we stopped at public places; and we arrested a few men on suspicion; but we met with no real success. Those whom we arrested proved their innocence, and others whom we would have arrested eluded our search. And yet, during all this time the depredations went on as before. Robberies were committed almost under our very noses; horses were carried off; houses were broken into; and even good, honest Andrew Drake, our high sheriff, had his portmanteau rifled of its contents while stopping at a public house in Clayburgh. The innkeeper was arrested instantly; but he proved himself as innocent as a lamb.

“Mr. Clark, what do you make of it?” asked Drake, when he met me at Errol.

I answered him that the robbers evidently had an organization more perfect than was the organization that had been brought to bear against them.

The sheriff admitted that I was right. It was very evident that the villainous gang was not only perfectly organized, but that the members were individually shrewd and daring, and true to each… 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?