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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

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From an Old Miscellany

The Bronze Statue

[by Anna Jane Vardill]

Count Lieuwen, a favorite officer in the service of the deceased king of Prussia, had under his special patronage and tuition, a young engineer of high rank, whose advancement to his notice had been solely due to his merits. His battalion, led by the Austrian Gen. Clairfait, then on his march through the Low Countries towards France, was ordered to surprise a small village on the frontiers in the enemy’s possession. In the middle of the night, young Ewald entered his commander’s tent, and informed him that a negotiation had been begun by the chief magistrate of this district to admit the Prussian soldiers into an ambuscade, by which they might surround the French stationed in the village of Altheim, and put them to the sword. “Sir,” he added, “I am acquainted with a path through the thickets that skirts the Church-yard, and by leading fifty chosen men through it, we may enclose the farm and out-houses in which these Frenchmen lodge, and force them to surrender, without the baseness of entering their hosts gates in groups disguised as travelers, and massacring them in their sleep. This vile provost has made the offer in hopes of reward, for which he conditions privately, heedless of the bloodshed and ravage which our soldiery would spread among the poor villagers in the blindness of their fury.” “You are right,” replied the count—“and it would be well to gain this advantageous post, without disgrace to our characters as Prussian soldiers, or outrage to the unoffending native. Through whose means did this honorable… 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?