The News

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 Police System of London

The police organization of London, which also embraces a supervision over several adjoining counties surrounding the metropolis and comprising a circumference of ninety miles, is a very perfect one, and may well be compared to a great living machine, keeping watch over the lives and property of two millions and a half of people. But perhaps the most curious is the ‘Detective’ branch of this organization.—In this art, success depends much upon individual qualifications, sagacity in drawing inferences from slight things, fertility of resource, a blood hound tenacity of pursuit, intimate acquaintance with the habits of thieves, and of their probable mode of acting in particular circumstances, and in the knack (and here real genius displays itself) of making a cast in the right direction in search of a clue. The old Bow Street professors of the science had attained to great perfection; they enjoyed great advantages, and received great rewards.—The peculiar nature of their business made them courted by the great, as well as feared by the small. Townsend was an intimate, we may say, of princes. Dressed in his customary suit, a yellow waistcoat, blue cloth cast with metal buttons, nankeen pantaloons, white silk stockings, and a flaxen wig, he might be seen walking down Constitution Hall in familiar chat with the Lord Chancellor. We will present the following extract showing the way in which the burglars were detected who broke into Mr. Holford’s house in the Regent’s Park.

… 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?