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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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My Orderly

Let me first state that this Orderly of mine (No. 1) is a strong, stout, apparently unsentimental fellow. For the rest, an honester or braver man never breathed. After some hardships and dangers encountered during the day, we were sitting round a large fire of sandal-wood, a luxury you can’t afford in England. Lying upon the ground at night, half starved by day, we can often enjoy a fire that our queen might envy; for this wood, when burning, gives out a delicious odor.

And now My Orderly (No. 1) speaks.

“I had a mate in Californey. I won’t tell his surname, sir. Many bad characters were there, and for self-defense, Harry and I kept much to ourselves. So I got to know him well, and to love him well, too, for he was a man in every way. We were very fortunate, and made a pile, when one day Harry said to me:

“‘Tom, old man, I’ll go home and marry Peggy.’

“This brought me up standing, for I didn’t see how I could part with him. I took the pipe out of my mouth, and looked at him without speaking. I think he saw how it was, for he said, immediately:

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?