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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

A Dangerous Charge

by Mary Grace Halpine

It was the last night of the year, and a few congenial spirits had gathered in the bachelor apartments of a mutual friend to spend in cheerful song and story the few remaining hours of the old year’s life.

Only one of the company had failed to add his share of these to the general entertainment.

“Come, Mortimer,” said the host, “it’s your turn now. If you can’t sing, let it be a story. You that have travelled about so much ought to be able to tell something worth hearing.”

A unanimous request that the host’s suggestion should be carried out having been made, Mortimer commenced his story.

“It was as long ago as the year ’45, when I was quite a young man, with very little experience of the world, though I thought I knew more than I do now, or am ever likely to know. For the last three years I had been head bookkeeper to a wholesale drygoods house in the western part of New York, enjoying in no small degree its esteem and confidence, which I fully appreciated, and did my best to deserve. With the desire to perform my duties well and acceptably, I… 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?