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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 Torn Newspaper;

or,

Circumstantial Evidence

by Oliver Sinclair

Chapter I

“I will never consent to your marriage with William Appleton, Ida,” said Charles Redington, with a flushed look and angry eyes.

“If I love William more than I love you, Charles, why should you be angry. This is not the way to make me love you better than William. If I cannot be your wife, I can be your friend! You have paid me a compliment I shall always be grateful for, in offering me your hand. I feel deeply your preference of me over other and fairer maidens of your acquaintance, and who I know would be made happy by such an offer. Nay, do not look displeased! Because I refuse to be your wife is no reason that I cannot esteem you as a friend!”

Thus calmly and gently and sensibly spoke Ida Boyd, a sweet, beautiful girl of eighteen, the daughter of a poor widow, to a rich young man of uncontrollable passions, who had loved her long and would have made her his wife; for though poor she was socially his equal, her father having been a gentleman of fortune who became bankrupt before his death through the failure of a bank in which he had invested all he was worth.

They were standing at the garden gate, to which he had asked her to accompany him after having called to see her, saying that he wished to say a few words to her alone. These few words were the offer of his hand and fortune. Her reply was, that she had been a month engaged to William Appleton. His angry exclamations of disappointment called from her the words of remonstrance and kindness which she addressed him at the beginning of our tale.

“Love or hatred!” he replied, almost fiercely. “I must either love or hate you, Ida Boyd! There is no medium with me. As for… 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?