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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

Select Story

Murder Most Foul

by W. C. Elam

I.

Forth from the smoke and carnage and thunder of the tremendous third day of Gettysburg there staggered a bewildered fugitive, wounded, fevered and half blinded by pain and blood. His faded, torn and tattered clothing (once, perhaps, a uniform) was blood-stained here and there, and his hatless forehead was marked by a bleeding cut. His left hand, wrapped in bloody bandages, rested in a sling, and he limped as he went with a labored gait. He bore no arms nor knapsack: these had already been ﬂung aside; and now, as he pursued his way, he divested himself hurriedly of all his accoutrements, one after another, and cast them impatiently to the ground. He took no path. He pushed on with unsteady yet rapid strides through bushes, over rocks and fences, straight ahead, with lips compressed in silent agony. His apparently wild and aimless ﬂight had carried him some miles from the actual conﬂict (which was not yet decided), when his fast diminishing strength was shown in his feebly-tottering steps and in the difficulty with which he kept from plunging headlong to the earth. At this moment he came in view of a farm-house, and the sight stimulated him to renewed effort. Forward he toiled, full of fresh hope, when, half-way between him and the goal of his exertions, there arose a high, broad stone wall. It seemed to him insurmountable, and he… 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?