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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

The Mute Witness

One cold, raw morning in February, [Byrd] Du Peyster, a detective, received the intelligence of a fearful deed of crime which had been committed during the silent hours of the night just departed. The account of the deed was read by a boarder while the detective quietly sipped his coffee, and the man remarked as he put the paper on the chair beside him:

“There’s another entry for the book of mysteries. I am willing to bet one hundred dollars that the proverbial acumen of our best detectives will fail to discover the perpetrator of the crime on Cherry street. Gentlemen,” and the speaker fixed his eyes on Du Peyster, “gentlemen, just think of it! A villain enters the abode of a poor sewing [woman], whose only child is a mute, five years old. He comes to do a bloody deed, and his struggles with the widow evidently frightens the child, who runs away, and is found in the attic among a lot of rags. The murder committed, the man takes his departure. The widow’s meager savings are untouched, her bureau and stands unrifled. Nothing has been taken save life. That man, whoever he is, laughs at the detectives, and dares them to hunt him down and tell why he took the life of a poor sewing woman. I declare, gentlemen, that murder in this case will not out.”

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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?