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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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His Own Detective

Count d’O was one of the gay sons of Paris. He originally possessed a large fortune; dissolute habits—the vortex of wealth and title—had expanded the better part of the princely independence. He was famous as the wildest, the most daring, and yet most generous of profligates. However, repeated losses at ecarte had somewhat drained his purse. Unlike the better part of the licentious, he had the wisdom to dispense with many follies; yet he still kept up a small whit of dissipation among a few boon companions, the choicest of whom was the Marquis D .

However, a few days before our tale commences, a rich relation dying, left him a considerable sum of money, and once more he was reinstated in his pleasure, while his boon companions, like vultures scenting their prey, began flocking round his open purse.

One evening Count d’O and the Marquis D were sitting in a richly-adorned apartment belonging to the former, when the conversation turned upon his late good fortune. The Marquis D listened to the count's remarks with a seeming nonchalance. He was whiffing a finely-scented cigar, and deeply employed in the philosophy of smoke. He was a tall exactly built man, and a thorough gentleman in manners and conversation, yet there was something in the glitter of the calm dark eye, something in the proudly curled smile which spoke of the man of emergency and talent. He was dissolute, had squandered a fortune; but was more renowned for his skill in dueling, quiet recklessness,… 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?