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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 Fortunate Robbery

an attorney’s story

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

At the time of which I am going to tell you, there had been difficulty in finding a competent man who would accept the office and perform the duties of Prosecuting Attorney of Calaveras County, California. as you are aware, who have been there, the rugged spurs of the Nevada Mountains cover a great part of the county, and amid their wild fastnesses are many haunts where bold bad men can establish themselves in such a manner that a mere handful can hold at bay a small army. The surface gold-diggings were being wonderfully developed, and there were places where the upper soil was capable of yielding a fortune to the lucky claimant in a short space of time. Miners were coming and going continually and by and by it came that travelling with gold about one’s person, save in good, well-armed company, was dangerous. It seemed as though all the robbers in California—all the desperate, throat-cutting ones—had made their way to Calaveras county. Several of the rascals had been apprehended, and had been brought to trial, with evidence enough against them to convict them off-hand; but they had been suffered to go free simply because the members of the court had been made to believe that every man who appeared against the robbers, either as witness, juryman, or prosecuting attorney, would be surely put to death. I had removed to Mokelumne Hills, the county seat, and opened a law… 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?