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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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A Detective’s Experience

A Life of Crime

One of the most remarkable cases that ever came within my experience was that of Lucille Dutton. She was, in every respect, a woman of the world. Fascinating, brilliant, dashing, possessing an exquisite grace of manner and rare conversational powers, that charmed every one who came within the sphere of her influence. Until her crimes were known and her arrest attempted, she reigned here an acknowledged belle. Even the most jealously envious of her own sex admitted the wondrous spell exercised by her singular and surpassing beauty.

An actress, a vocalist, it would have been no extravagant eulogy to have called her a prima donna. Tall beyond the average of women, her slender, graceful form was modeled into an exquisite symmetry that would have been a sculptor’s ideal. Curling, silky tresses of nut brown hair, shaded a face fair and delicate as a child. Great luminous black eyes flashed from beneath the beautiful lashes with a strange mesmeric power, that few indeed had the power to resist. This expression, combined with her rare intellectual gifts, made her regnant over many a heart that had never before felt the spelt of woman’s charms.

She had come to New Orleans as a vocalist. Her engagement was attended with a success never before equaled by the most accomplished professional. Night after night the theatre was crowded with her admirers. Her appearance was ever the signal of an enthusiasm all but wild. As the weird light of the… 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?