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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

A Night Among Robbers

by Judge Clark

It was the last night of my bachelor life, and as Archy Burton insisted I was bound to “die game,” I had consented to spend it with him, “instead,” to use Archy’s expression, “of moping at home by way of foretaste of my future state.”

I was to meet my friend at half past nine, at his lodgings, whence we were to visit the theatre in time to see the last of “Mary Warner.”

It was already a quarter of nine, and in order to keep my appointment I was hurrying, by way of a “short cut,” along a dimly lighted, unfrequented street, into which a number of dark alleys opened.

Into one of these I felt myself suddenly dragged by a number of violent hands, which had seized me from behind in passing; and before I had time to make any outcry or offer the slightest resistance, I was securely bound, gagged, and blindfolded, and completely at the mercy of my unknown assailants.

“The least noise of disturbance will be at the cost of your life,” was the admonition I received, whispered into one ear and emphasized by the click of a pistol at the other; and then I was hurried swiftly forward, and thrust into a carriage between two of my captors, while others followed.

Immediately we set forward. How far we went, how many turns we took, or where we stopped, of course I could not tell. I was only sensible of time and motion. Whither either tended, I knew not.

At last we ceased to move. I was assisted out and led, guarded as before, several paces over what I judged to be a rough pavement, when a door opened and closed, and then I was made to ascend a narrow stair-way, after which I was forced into a seat and released from the hands… 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?