The News

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

The Doctor’s Evidence

by Judge Clark

For the first time in its history, the inhabitants of the quiet village of Elmdale had been shocked by the discovery of a great crime committed in their midst.

Seth Driscoll, a well-known citizen, was found, at early dawn, lying dead in his own garden. A ghastly bullet wound in the back of the head left no room to question the cause of death; and any suspicion of suicide was rebutted, as well by the position of the wound, as by the discovery of footprints leading back and forth from a spot near the body to garden wall, at a point where the latter bore evident marks of having been scaled.

But the crowning discovery was that of a pistol, recently discharged, lying near the base of the wall where the murderer had clambered over. It was picked up by Jonas Wenlock, Mr. Driscoll’s nephew, who gave a start of surprise at the sight.

“I know who owns this weapon!” he exclaimed.

“Who? who?” questioned a dozen eager voices.

“Volney Kendall,” he answered.

Had a thunder-clap fallen among the listeners the… 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?