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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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Janet's Wedding Present

Janet's features were small, but perfect in their regularity. Her brown eyes had unknown depths of tenderness. In its luxuriant abundance her bright hair had a perpetual tendency to escape from all control, and to fall about her like a veil, hiding her from mortal view. And it could have been done this! It was long enough and ample enough, especially as that perfect little figure of hers might soon have been put out of sight. Bless you, Arthur, her husband, was a tall, well-knit, handsome fellow, towering above her several feet, as it seemed; but in spite of the disparity in their height, it may be safely affirmed that he did not lose one loving glance of those gentle eyes, nor did a tone of his subdued voice fail to reach her ears. There is a magic in these things—the magic of mutual love.

As the bride and bridegroom entered the breakfast-room, with the bridesmaids in their gauzy trappings fluttering about them, there was a murmur of congratulations and a soft clapping of gloved hands. The guests went into little raptures of admiration.

“So handsome! so beautiful!” passed from one to the other; and there was the simpering and the glistening of tears inevitable on these occasions.

Arthur’s face was radiant with delight; the bride’s sweet features reflected her husband’s happiness.

Old Morton, standing with his back to the fireplace, from which he appeared to… 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?