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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 Suspected California Murderer

Arrested—Charged With Killing Four Men: A German, For his Money, and Two Sheriffs and a Driver, Who Were Conveying Him To Prison

by George McWatters

The following article is taken from the New York Dispatch (1861), and serves to illustrate the sagacity of Officer McWatters in “picking out his man” in a crowd.

A young man named Velge, lately from California, was arrested at the pier of the Ocean Mail Steamship Company by Officers McWatters and Hartz, of the Steamboat Squad, and taken to Police Headquarters, where he has been since detained, till the matter can undergo examination before a magistrate. The report, as obtained from an officer at the central office, is substantially as follows: —

About eighteen months since, a German, residing in Sacramento, was murdered under circumstances of extraordinary brutality. He was mild and inoffensive, said no extenuation appeared to exist for the atrocious crime. He had saved some money, which the assassin had taken, but the amount was hardly sufficient to induce an ordinary bravo to attempt his life, or otherwise disturb him.

The suspected murderer was known to the police. Extraordinary measures were adopted to bring him to justice. His likeness was obtained somehow, and photographs of it were multiplied and distributed all over California and Oregon.

After some time, intelligence was received at Sacramento that the suspected murderer was at Carson City. There was a resemblance, certainly. The sheriff of Sacramento and a deputy repaired thither, and arrested him. A conveyance was obtained, and the legal formularies having all - been attended to, the officers set out for Sacramento.

The journey was tedious… 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?