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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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Burglars' Tricks Upon Burglars

by Allan Pinkerton

Criminals not only are very ingenious in their schemes against the general public, but they frequently show considerable skill and a certain grade of quiet humor in well-laid plans against each other.

An instance of the kind happened in this wise:

In 1875, Scott and Dunlap—the famous bank robbers who robbed the Northampton National Bank of nearly a million dollars, and who are now behind the bars of the penitentiary of that State, through the efforts of my Agencies—had laid their plans to rob a certain uptown New York city bank.

George Miles, alias Bliss, alias White, the notorious Max Shinburne’s old partner, and his party were concocting a like operation for relieving a downtown bank of its capital.

Now it was found by the Miles party that both banks were to be robbed in like manner, by that very popular method of “bank-bursting,” which consists of renting a room or rooms above those occupied by a bank, and then, if possible, tunneling through into its… 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?