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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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Seven-Up

In a pleasant farm house, one wintry eve after supper and a hard day’s work at thrashing, Samuel Grey rose from his chair with a sad, weary look, and stood before the drawer of an old bureau.

“Samuel, what is thee doing?” asked his mother, following him. “Thee is not going out tonight, when so tired?”

“Yes, mother,” he replied, taking up with a sigh, a small calico bag, which seemed well filled.

“Why, that is the mortgage money, Samuel; what does thee want with that? It is not due till next spring.”

“I know it, mother, but I must have this money this night,” he answered in a determined tone.

“For what, my son? Thee has always told me everything. We earned the money together.”

“I know it, mother. All these years we have toiled to pay off that mortgage left on the farm at my father’s death, and now it has all come to nothing. Sit down in your chair, mother, and I will tell you the truth, as I trust I have ever done. I do not fear your blame, as I have always loved your praise. This one egregious error has taught me great lessons already. They say women can bear troubles better than men.”

Samuel’s mother trembled very much, but she sat quietly down. Her face was pleasant to look at—healthy and fresh, with a clean Quaker cap crimped about it. She could not believe her son had done anything so very wrong; but all was a mystery.

“Last evening you know how late I staid away, and I presume you thought I was with Ellen at the farm; but I was not; more is the pity. I went on an errand to the tavern to get some oil for our lame horse’s leg. The bar-room was a blaze of light, and all the boys there, and I stepped in to warm. There were two finely dressed gentlemen from Boston sitting around the table, calling for the best of port wine, and treating the company. They called me to join so cordially that I consented, and felt… 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?