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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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The Red Chest

An Experience in the Life of a Russian Detective

In 188- I was briefly in the service of the Imperial Criminal Detective Police Bureau, in St. Petersburg, which is distinctly different from the civil secret service, dealing almost wholly with political offenders, with whose infamously barbarous employment I would have nothing to do.

A series of extraordinary robberies had been effected from the luggage van of a number of trains on the St. Petersburg & Odessa railway.

I was, therefore, not surprised at being one day summoned by General Triposki, the chief of the department, who said to me, after some preliminary words:

“Go to see Herr Moyenstein, the luggage superintendent, and see what you can make of these robberies. You can even conceal yourself in the van of the next through train if you see fit.[”]

“If you succeed in solving the mystery and bringing the perpetrator or perpetrators to justice, I guarantee you speedy promotion, and the company will doubtless fill your pouch with rubles.[”]

“If not, ahem!”—General Triposki stroked his huge moustache, and glanced down complacently over the perfect polish of his military top boots, with a peculiar glint in his hard, gray eyes—“well, that will be… 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?