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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

The Picture of a Ruin

“What face is that?”

Pressed against a shutterless window a wild, haggard face looked out into the darkness. Age had seemed the face with lines, and sorrow had whitened the hair like snow. Long and silky the tangled locks swept around the shoulders just seen above the sill.

“Is it a woman[?]”

“Yes.”

“How sad she looks!”

“Yes,” replied a third voice, “and her life has been as piteous as that sad face.”

“You know her then?”

“Yes.”

And again we looked to the window where defined against the glass the wistful face looked out into the night. The glare of the burning gas made all bright in the room. In the shadow of the clouded night we were unseen. Silently we looked up at the poor lady while our comrade recited the story of her life.

You would hardly think that a face as wild and [wrinkled] as that could once have been beautiful. Yet I knew her when few, indeed, could rival her. Her hair was long and black, and wound in many a rich coil and braid adorned a head small and beautiful. The olive tint of cheek and brow was fresh as the bloom of flowers, and there was a fascination and charm in the wondrous eyes that none might resist. But it was not in personal charms alone she excelled. There was genius in the glance of her eye; the cunning of the limner was in the fair, delicate hands, and many a beautiful thought; many a fair vision seen in dreams, grew into form beneath the delicate touches of her pencil… 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?