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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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Mrs. Gregory’s Diamonds

by Mary Kyle Dallas

A Letter From The Mines Of California

Madam,

I am a miner. I have been one for years, and I have not made my fortune yet. Still, I am better off than many: better off by far than the poor fellow who died here last night. For a year or two I have often met him, unkempt and scarcely clad, wandering about, seeming to care for nothing. They say he might have been rich, that luck followed him—(we miners are apt to be superstitious)—and that he could pick nuggets up where others toiled in vain for days. But he gave or threw them away, only keeping so much as would buy food. Lodging he had none, save in the open air. He would talk with none and dwell with none, and we thought him mad. But after his death, I found a manuscript in his bosom, which I send to you. It seems to be his own story. We felt so sure of it, that one of our fellows, a carver by trade, has cut the name Frank Forrest on the board above his grave. We read this the night after his funeral, at our camp fire. Perhaps some others might also like to do so. If you think so, here it is; if not, there is no harm done.

And I am very truly yours,

A Miner

The Manuscript

George Gregory, Attorney-at-law, was on the sign over the door, and everyone always called my employer George Gregory, because there were seven brothers of the name, all in the law. I was Frank Forrest, aged twenty-two, and I was articled clerk to Mr. George Gregory. He was the best friend I ever had, and the best husband and father I ever knew. At home he had a good, merry little wife, and a dozen children so near of an age and so exactly alike that… 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?