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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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Burbridge the Actor

An English Detective's Story

The neatest and about the longest job I ever was concerned in was young Mr. Burbridge’s case, and that I did in London without any help from the London police. He was in the theatrical profession; a smart young chap, greatly trusted by his manager—made a sort of confidential secretary of, and allowed to keep the accounts and all the cash. No one checked or counted t’other. One fine morning he went off with a big sum. He had been to the bank and drawn a check to pay the weekly wages, but he went off instead, leaving the treasury empty and the whole company whistling for their “screws.” The manager was half mad, and he come at once to the police. The chief sent for me.

“It’s a bad business, thoroughly bad, and we must get him,” he said.

“No idea which way he’s gone?” I asked.

“None; that’s for you to find out. So take up the case at once. Spare no pains—spend what money you like, only catch him if you can.”

In jobs of this sort, sir, time goes a long way, of course. But it ain’t everything. Burbridge had got a good start, several… 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?