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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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Arresting a Murderer

by Emerson Bennett

During the early settlement of Texas, it was my fortune, whether good or bad, to be made sheriff of the County of —. At that time, as all know who are conversant with the history of the “Lone Star,” the whole country was filled with outlaws and desperadoes of every description, from the common gambler and thief, down to the highway robber and cold-blooded assassin. In every settlement of note they could be found by scores, and sometimes by hundreds; and in many places they formed by far the largest portion of the population. Where this was the case they ruled in blood, might made right, and woe to him who dared to breathe of law and order. Texas at that time was to some extent composed of the refuse of creation, the scum of the earth, the dregs of society—scoundrels and villains of various nations and climes. Of course there were many honest, upright, pure-minded people in the country—or it might perhaps have remained a land of robbers and murderers to this day—but I think the majority had more sins than virtues, and I know that a large portion of the floating population was absolutely bad, wicked, and fiendish.

Now it happened that the county of which I had the honor to be sheriff, and which for reasons of my own I do not care to name, was one of the worst in the State—by which I mean that it contained more bad men and less good men than any other. In two or three of the principal settlements, there was a fearful representation of every kind of wickedness, beginning with drinking, and going down through fighting, gambling and stealing, to burglary, robbery, arson and murder.

In one of the largest and most populous of these settlements, the one in which I resided, and which contained the courthouse and jail, it had been the custom, previous to my introduction into office, to average at least one homicide per night, besides a goodly number of… 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?