The News

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 Detective's Discovery

How Mrs. Popperman Grew Suspicious Over a Mysterious Bur

“Where did these burs come from?” and Mrs. Popperman pulled three real old-fashioned burs from her husband's coat as he lay on the lounge the other evening.

Now, it would have been very easy for Mr. Popperman to have told where the burs came from, but he thought it would be a good joke to mystify his wife, so he pretended to be surprised.

“I—I—don't know.”

“Have you been into the country to-day?”

“No.”

“Well, it's very singular how a business man can get burs on his clothes in New York.”

“Well, I'll tell you. The health officers have planted burdock bushes on Broadway to purify the air and prevent the horses from having blind staggers. Sometimes I brush up against these bushes.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Popperman eyed her husband suspiciously, but said nothing more.

The next morning two more burs were picked from his pants.

“Now, I want to know what this means. I went to New York yesterday on purpose to see if there were bushes on Broadway. There wasn’t one. Now I want an explanation.”

“Well, I'll tell you, my dear. These are[n’t] burs. They are the fruit of a remarkable tropical plant which is now on exhibition at the Fifth Avenue hotel. This plant is twenty feet high. Occasionally I go into the hotel,… 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?