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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 Very Rapid Youth

The Strange Story of Attorney General Williams’ Stepson—How he was Led Into Crime and Induced to Jump the Country by Government Detectives

A perceptible shiver runs through society here to-night at what is supposed to have been a revelation by Whitely to the inquisition committee headed by Proctor Knott, of an especially scandalous incident concerning the family of ex-Attorney General Williams. The facts have been known only to a very few people up to this date, and the exact shape of them is not even now distinctly known to the vast majority of those who shudder as aforesaid. Attorney General Williams had once a stepson, a wild, graceless, dissipated young fellow, whose love for fast life and illicit pleasures would have driven him through more money than A.T. Stewart left, had such a sum been at his disposal. He lived a most ungodly life, and spent not only all the money he could get from his mother’s husband, but all he could win or borrow, and still was always “short.” His escapades were numerous and invariably of a most disgraceful sort, but until one evening he went over to Baltimore and stole the diamonds and jewelry belonging to a celebrated prostitute of that city, he had never run foul of the criminal laws. The exploit, however, got him into trouble. The female came to this city, made a great to-do about her loss, and demanded restitution. Whitley, whose… 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?