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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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[Written for The Flag of Our Union]

The Midnight Alarm

by James Dabney

The village of H—was one of the quietest and most orderly places in New England. From the days of the Pilgrim Fathers down to the time of which we write, it had always maintained a reputation for soberness, steadiness and morality and its inhabitants were among the most rigid and straitlaced in the land. Even the little children were grim and sour enough to have made old Praise God Barebones’s heart leap with joy, could he have seen them. Not a case of crime or misdemeanor had occurred in the village for fifty years, and the last person hung there was a Quaker who had the boldness to attempt to propagate his “infamous doctrines” in the good town of H—in the days of the colony.

This being the state of affairs, the reader may imagine the horror and consternation of the townspeople when it was announced, one Sunday morning, that the store of Deacon Harding had been robbed of several hundred dollars’ worth of goods on the previous night. This startling news was followed by the equally startling announcement that Squire Wilson’s horse and wagon had been stolen, also, no doubt by the thief or thieves, for the purpose of carrying off the plunder.

The news was absolutely so startling that few persons went to church that day; but the majority of them might have been collected here and there in little knots, discussing the momentous event. It seemed incredible that any one should have committed such a crime in H—, and each man, woman and child set to work to remember what strangers had been in the place of late. No one could recollect… 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?