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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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La Serenissima

A Tale of Venice

It was towards the end of—60, when one night an English king’s messenger reached Mestre, waiting to cross over to Venice. Sir John Hawser—such was his name—was young, brave and very highly connected, and as such perhaps, he had been chosen by the ministry to convey some trifling message to King George III’s representative in that town. He reached Venice just before dawn; and after a hurried toilet and a still more hurried breakfast, Sir John delivered his packet, and began exploring the lanes and alleys of this incomprehensible town.

Thoroughly enjoying the freedom of walking after his long journey by coach and gondola, Sir John indulged his rambling propensities to the full extent. Whilst he was doing so a crowd collected in front of the Ducal Palace.

While pushing and elbowing his way in the crowd some cleaver pickpocket robbed him of his lace handkerchief. He would have been less angry if it had happened in London; the pickpockets there were so clever that there was no shame in being their victim; but to have been plundered by a clumsy Venetian was too much for his equanimity, and he burst out in a torrent of abuse. Speaking mostly in Italian, but mixing a few English anathemas in his speech, he related his loss to a few bystanders, and was advised by them to complain to the police, or rather to those officials who under the Serenissima fulfilled the present duties of the… 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?