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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

Select Story

Sidney’s Trust

by Anna Shields

“I hold that perfect confidence should exist between man and wife. Without mutual trust, there can be no true happiness.”

Sidney Worthington spoke with honest enthusiasm, with a vision of soft brown eyes, a tender smile and sweet, loving voice floating through his mind. His uncle, a grave, middle-aged man, a widower for many years, and the victim of an “unhappy marriage” before that, smiled kindly.

“Ah, my boy,” he said, gently, “may you never have your faith shaken. You are right in theory, but, as in many other cases, theory may give way when you come to a practical test of the unquestioning faith.”

“I can scarcely imagine myself doubting Mattie, under any circumstances,” was the quick, emphatic reply.

“She is, I firmly believe, the very soul of truth,” said Mr. Worthington, “and I did not mean to be personal when I spoke a moment ago of woman’s powers of concealment and duplicity. The truth is, Sidney, I am soured by my own disappointed life.”

“Saddened, perhaps,” said his nephew, “but never soured. No one knows that better than I do.”

Then they talked of other matters, chiefly of business, for the firm of “Worthington & Co.” was represented by the two. It was late when they parted, Mr. Worthington to step into the bedroom of his suit of apartments in a fashionable boarding-house, and Sidney to rapidly pass through the streets that separated that boarding-house from his own cosy home.

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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?