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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

Between Cup and Lip

by Frances Mary Schoolcraft

The vesper service at Notre Dame was over. Among the last who left the cathedral were a young woman and a young man. They were not in company. The young woman came out first, and walked away with the step and air of one who is in haste to arrive at home. The young man followed her almost immediately, but not closely, and paused a moment, looking doubtfully up and down the place, until his eye fell upon the receding figure of the young woman, when their sudden lighting up told that it was she they were searching for. He started in pursuit eagerly, and yet cautiously, keeping her in sight, but never coming very near. He was not much more than twenty-one, this young man, and had a very handsome face, of almost feminine delicacy of feature and complexion, but with keen, quick, hazel eyes, and a haughty and resolute air that were no more feminine than the short brown mustache that marked the curve of his upper lip. His dress was plain to coarseness, and of anything but a fashionable cut; but either the wearer had a dress far below his station in society, or manners far above it. The young woman, though she was good-looking enough, with her jet-black hair and eyes, nut-brown skin and ivory teeth, did not seem one likely to win the doubtful and dangerous compliment of being followed in the street by an over-devoted lover. She was certainly several years his senior, and her handsome, erect figure was a trifle more square-shouldered and strongly-built than belongs to the highest order of beauty. Neither did she look at all like a coquette, having a bright, energetic, practical and somewhat sarcastic face. For all this, the young man followed her as if his life and happiness depended upon keeping her in sight. As she entered a quiet old French street, she suddenly stopped, and looked round. The young man regarding himself either as detected or invited,… 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?