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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 Resurrectionist

A Detective’s Story

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

On the sixteenth day of April, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, which day was Saturday, I received an order from our chief to proceed with all possible dispatch to Poultney, where there had been a heavy robbery, and see what I could do towards ferreting out the robbers. I was informed that it had been a bold and daring proceeding, and if I should find myself in want of help I might send word to headquarters. I made my preparations for the journey very quickly, and was in season for the four o’clock train by which I reached Poultney just at dusk. My first call was upon Mr. Robert Pond, the senior member of the firm whose safe had been robbed. I found him to be a middle-aged man, and a gentleman of the old school. His dwelling, and all connected therewith, bespoke wealth and comfort, and he certainly knew how to enjoy the good things of this life, though I must say that he had an aristocratic way with him which I thought quite out of keeping with the country town in which he lived; and at first he seemed inclined to treat me quite coolly, intimating that the quicker I did my business the better he should like it. But I remembered that he must be chafing under the burden of the loss, and also that it was Saturday evening, a time when business men like to be at rest, especially in their own homes. And then I had snuffed the fumes of tea and toast as I entered the hall, and I supposed his supper might be waiting for him.

“My name is Philip Daggett, sir,” I said; “and I have been sent up from the city to see you, and to help you if I can.”

His seeming hauteur melted away I nan instant, and he took me by the hand as though I had been an old friend.

“You have not been to tea, Mr. Daggett.”

I told him I would go to the hotel and get tea, and call… 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?