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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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Extraordinary Self-Robbery

by Allan Pinkerton

One day in December, 1870, the president of one of the Chicago national banks called at my office and desired a private interview with me.

His statement was, that the deputy county treasurer of a county in Iowa, while alone in his office, had been assaulted by some unknown ruffians, nearly murdered, and sixteen thousand dollars taken out of his safe.

It was desired by some correspondent of the bank’s, at the county seat where the assault and robbery had occurred, that the bank president should confer with me and secure my assistance.

Having but these bare outlines of the matter, I could do no more than at once dispatch one of my most able men to the point, with such general instructions as at that time could be given. This man—a keen, shrewd Irish American named Hanlon, upon whom had previously devoted the successful working up, under my direction, of several heavy bank and safe robberies—proceeded immediately to the place, and there met a gentleman named Wooster, who had authorized the operation, and who, being on the deputy treasurer’s bonds, was naturally very anxious that the burglars and would-be murderers should… 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?