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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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Incident in the Life of a California Detective

Some years since, the stage line in the southern part of this State suffered from frequent depredations by "road-agents." The express company offered liberal rewards and the local officers displayed commendable zeal, all to no purpose. Some of the officers of the company, with whom I had been acquainted while sheriff of one of the mining counties, requested me to take the matter in hand and see if I could get any clue to work upon. Suspecting that some of my former acquaintances who had served a term or two in the penitentiary had returned to their old vocations in "pastures new," and believing that if such was the case I could soon get upon their track, I readily consented.

The day after I had received my instructions, I was on the road to the scene of the last robbery. I represented myself as a stockraiser looking for feed; and, as it was an exceedingly dry year and feed very scarce, my representations were readily accepted. The numerous robberies were the most frequent topics of conversation among the very sparse population on the line of my road. I affected indifference to the subject, but carefully noted everything said.

At a certain station where I had remained two days and had vainly sought evidence upon which to found a theory, I hired a horse of a native Californian, telling him and others that I was going across the mountains to the coast to look for grass; tied my… 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?