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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 Frustrated Plot

by Mrs. Emily Thornton

“Dearest mother, when shall we sit together again? Never in this dear old room!” and Nellie Russell laid her head upon her mother’s shoulder and wept.

Those were indeed sad hearts that throbbed so near each other that beautiful August evening—the last they would ever spend in the parsonage they had so long called home. Here Nellie had first seen the light of day, for to this spot the pastor of the Presbyterian church of that village had brought Nellie’s mother, a fair young bride, twenty-two years before. In the room in which we found them sitting, so sadly weeping, Mr. Russell had suddenly breathed his last, about six weeks previous to the commencement of our story. On the morrow they were to bid farewell to this cherished place—Mrs. Russell to live at a brother’s in a pretty town nearby, supported by an annuity settled on her by the attached people of her husband’s charge, while Nellie was to fill the situation of a governess in a pious noblemen’s near shire, England. I will not linger upon those farewell scenes of the morrow, nor picture the smothered sighs and bursting tears as, clasped in each other’s arms, they breathed their long adieus.

“Put your trust in Jesus, daughter. He will support you in every trial,” Mrs. Russell whispered, pressing a last kiss upon Nellie’s pale lips.

“I will, mother; He shall be my only refuge now. Farewell!”… 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?