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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

A Ghost in the Garret

by Mary Kyle Dallas

“This is the garret floor. It’s a relic of the past,” said Miss Pettigrew. “They do not build such garrets now. The house is more than a hundred years old. It was my grandfather’s grandfather who built it. By the way,” continued the lady, turning on her guest in a sharp and bird-like manner peculiar to her—“by the way, this garret is haunted.”

“How delightful! Do tell me about the ghost!” cried the young lady who had followed her into the great room which covered half the large house.

“The ghost, Miss Walker, is a soldier, an officer who was killed by a jealous husband in a duel, which took place here. He walks up and down, trailing his sword after him, and is said to be as pale as death; however, he hasn’t been seen for ten years, though the servants are terribly afraid of him yet.

“They sleep,” said Miss Pettigrew, “in that half of the garret which is partitioned off, and use the backstairs. They wouldn’t come here for the world, so I make a sort of store closet of those shelves there, and feel perfectly safe about my sweetmeats.

“Here,” said Miss Pettigrew, opening a little door—“here is still… 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?