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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 Man in the Brown Coat

The Tobacconist's Story

by Mary Kyle Dallas

“Excuse me, sir; when I first saw you come in, I thought you were—ahem!—him, sir—Havanas? yes, sir—a very fine quality, and cheaper than you can find them elsewhere. Have a light, sir? For whom did I take you? Law, sir, I—I took you for the gentleman in the brown coat!

“You see, you are a gentleman in a brown coat—and that’s how the mistake arose. And it is a curious coincidence that the first time he ever came into this shop, he came inquiring, as you did, for Havanas.

“Well, it is a story—though it’s a thing, no doubt, that happens every day. But a little event is a great one to quiet folks like me. Here I live, year in and year out, hardly going anywhere unless it is to church—I have a seat in Doctor Klicket’s—or to my brother John’s, at Elizabeth, where he has as fine a family as you ever saw. And I have no wife; though I admire the ladies. Yes, it was rather a remarkable event in my life!

“The rooms above, sir, are what you wouldn’t expect from the outside of the house. High ceiling, marble mantels, and a centre-piece. The gas is in, too, in a chandelier; but that the tenant I’m goin’ to tell you about put in himself.

“I had some trouble letting ’em, sir, at times; because, you see, folks willing to pay the price I asked didn’t want to live over a tobacconist’s shop. So, one year, the bill was up a long while, and I did nothing but show the room to folks that bothered my life out.

“One English party I never shall forget, for they were more than flesh and blood could stand. Glad I was then, you may guess, when, one day, a gentleman—a very young gentleman to hire rooms, walked into my shop; and, after… 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?