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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

Tracking a Criminal

The Story of a Pinkerton Detective

While a member of Pinkerton's detective force I made the arrest of a highway robber at Madison, Wis. He was arrested for a robbery committed in Illinois five months before, and I had been on the case two months when I finally ran him down. He was a machinist by trade, and was then working in a shop. I proved him to be an old crook and a dangerous one, and was satisfied that he went into the shop to baffle pursuit; but it seemed to strike others differently. The reporters wrote him up as one anxious to reform, and they wrote me down as a bloodhound hanging to his trail, and so considerable public sympathy was aroused for him. I then had proofs of four other crimes committed by him, any one of which would send him to prison, but I had to keep silent and take public criticism. My man got a sentence of five years, and he had scarcely departed for prison when I received through the mail a note reading:

“You have by money and perjury sent an honest man to prison. You know he was honest and hardworking. You wanted to glorify yourself. The poor fellow is a friend of mine, and I have sworn to revenge him. Take notice that I will have your life on the first opportunity.”

There was no signature to the letter, but I knew at a glance that the writer meant business. It was a plain, bold hand, and after half an hour's study I made these deductions:

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?