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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

Mr. Dawbarn

by T.W. Robertson

CHAPTER I.

“Would you have the kindness to step this way, sir, into Mr. Dawbarn’s room?”

These words were addressed by a banker’s clerk to a young man whose dress and manners were a vulgar compound of groom, betting-man, and pugilist. The sporting gentleman swaggered by the desks and the clerks, looking infinite disparagement at the whole concern, and was ushered through the double doors into the presence of Mr. Dawbarn.

Mr. Dawbarn was the principal banker in Bramlingdon, and Bramlingdon was the county town of the little county of Mulford. It consisted of one long, straggling street, beautified by five old churches, each a splendid specimen of architecture, which contrasted strongly with the Town Hall, the Corn Exchange, and the Market Place, which were modern buildings, and unpleasant to look at.

“Mr. Studden,” said Mr. Dawbarn to the young gentleman of sporting appearance, “I have to talk to you, sir, very seriously; sit down, if you please.”

Mr. Studden sat in a chair as if it were a saddle, shut one eye knowingly, and examined the thong of his whip with the other.

“Mr. Studden,” continued the banker, solemnly, “I have been informed that you have overdrawn your account to the amount of—”

“Yes; I know all about that, governor,” broke in Mr. Studden, “I’ve been told so twice.”

“I therefore gave directions that the next time you presented a check, you should be shown in here to me,” said the banker.

“That is—a check of my own drawing.”

“Quite so.”

“Well, now… 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?