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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 Story

What life is more thrilling than that of a police detective, what more full of startling adventure? An incident in the experience of two men well known in the city of New Orleans, as the most skillful and accomplished detectives in the Southern country, has been related to the reporter. It is useless to say who they are, their names are household words throughout the valley of the Mississippi. The event about to be related is of recent occurrence. It is one of the unpublished histories of crime, one of the heart-beats underneath the social current of the great city – But the words of the detective invests the relation with an interest more potent than the reporter can accord it.

Let him tell the story:

A robbery had been committed in one of our large commercial houses under very singular circumstances. The day preceding the crime a large amount of money had been received and left in the safe over night. Part of this money consisted of $20 and $50 bills. Unknown to any one but the proprietor, they were marked with a small cross of red ink in the left hand corner. The safe was locked at night, in the morning it was open, the night clerk asleep under the influence of chloroform and the money gone. The cashier was a young man of high social position, and about to be married to the daughter of the proprietor. He alone carried the keys of the safe. It was evident that the lock had been picked or opened with the key. Our observation convinced us that it was the latter. Still we kept our own council. At the request of the merchant the whole matter was kept a profound secret. It furthered our chances of detecting the robber that it should be so. Before we had left the store, we had settled in our minds the identity of the thief; but it was necessary to obtain the proof before our suspicions were divulged, or arrest attempted. Description of the money stolen was left with certain parties, under… 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?