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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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A Detective’s Story of New York Life

“You are too young to remember the case of Miss P—,” said the detective as he gave a twist to his moustache and crossed one leg over the other, as if settling himself down for a narrative in which he had a personal interest. “Well, it was one of the most remarkable cases that I ever had anything to do with, and John Young will tell you the same thing. He took a hand in working it up, and if he wasn’t as much astonished as any of us before we got things ‘dead to rights’ you can set me down as a donkey. Now, if you’ve got time I’ll tell you all about.”

The detective was informed that he would be attentively listened to.

“It happened—let me see, it’s now 1870—well, it happened [seventeen] years ago. ‘Old Man’ Matsell was an officer then, and things were not allowed to go begging to be worked up in those days, I can tell you. I remember that I was sitting in the office one cold night all alone. It was raining furiously, and the wind shook the windows as though bent on making short work of the old shanty in Broome street. A good fire was burning in the stove and I felt particularly comfortable; in fact, I was just falling into a doze when the office door opened without anybody knocking. The sharp gust of wind that came rushing in brought me to my senses, and on starting to my feet, half unconsciously, I saw the outline of a female form before me in the dim light, for I had weak eyes then, you know, and couldn’t bear the gas at its full height. I turned the burner hinge at once, and saw that the person who stood before me shivering with the cold, and with water dripping down from the shawl she had drawn over her head, was a girl apparently about seventeen years of age. Her face was a comely one, and as she raised her hand to her eyes to brush away a… 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?