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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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How Lamirande Was Caught

by Gaston Fay

ERNEST SUREAU LAMIRANDE, a Bachelor of Arts, a defaulter, and ex-Cashier of the Branch Bank of France at Poitiers, is a gentleman by birth, in his manners, and in his capability for rascality. I doubt if in previous history any Bachelor of Arts has ever attained to the notoriety of Lamirande; for to secure such fame one must indeed follow in the footsteps of the clever defaulter, or, at best, be the recipient of the Jerome medal for good manners.

The family of Lamirande is one of the most respectable of the South of France. The father was a banker of eminence at Poitiers, and the brother is to-day a magistrate of the same city. In a social point of view the defaulter enjoyed peculiar advantages; besides he was in receipt of a salary of twelve thousand francs, every sou of which he could apply to his “menus plaisirs,” for all his necessary expenses were defrayed by M. Lamirande, Senior.

As cashier, Lamirande occupied a position of ease, of responsibility, and of opportunities; of the first and third he availed himself, but, after the manner of such, sought to escape the second. Lamirande, moreover, was a gambler: both the Widow Blanc and… 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?