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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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French Detectives

Some five or six years ago, being on a visit to Paris, I went to see a friend, a French gentleman I had known for many years, who, with his wife and only daughter, lived in a small house in the Faubourg St. Germain. I found the family one and all in the greatest possible excitement. During the night their domicile had been broken into and property to the value of about 30.000 francs (₤1,200), consisting of plate, jewels, money and bonds, had been stolen. My friend was by no means a rich man, and the loss was to him a very serious one. The strangest part of the affair was that no one seemed to have the slightest idea by who or how the lost things had been taken. They were kept in a large iron-clamped chest, which was never moved out of the salle a manger, and which was found in its usual place next morning, but with the lock forced open. The servants of the family were only two in number, and consisted of an elderly man and his wife, who had been in the same service for more than ten years. They did not sleep on the same floor as their master and mistress; but, as is usual in Paris, occupied a room some stories higher in the mansarde or attic. They had a key by which to let themselves in from the back stairs to the kitchen in the morning; but at the time of the robbery neither one nor the other had been in the dining-room where the chest was kept until after my friend’s daughter had found out what had happened. The lady of the house had locked the chest—it was her usual habit before she had retired to rest the previous night. The key was found hanging on a nail at the head… 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?