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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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A Make-Believe Story

A Clever Woman’s Ruse with a Supposed Detective

George Dunlap was hurrying through the railroad station at Springfield to catch the train for Montreal. He was a little late, and the knowledge of this fact so heightened the susceptibility of his nerves that, when a tall woman with her arms full of parcels fell heavily against him, dropping her parcels, some of which burst and scattered their contents in every direction, only the sense of the politeness due to her sex kept him from using an ejaculation that would at least have expressed great impatience. She had clutched him nervously as she slipped and he supported her a moment while he inquired if she was hurt.

“I don’t know,” she said, panting, “I turned my ankle—I feel terribly jarred.”

When she recovered herself sufficiently to stand without his help, he could do no less than to offer to gather up her parcels, and he had the satisfaction of feeling that he was doing his duty, and seeing his train steam out of the station at one and the same time.

“Well, as I have lost my train—” he began, as he stood holding some of her bundles in his arms.

“Was that your train?” she exclaimed, still visibly agitated. “It was mine, too, I think—I am not sure—I am a stranger, I want to go to Hartford.”

“This was not your train then,” he answered, “yours starts from the other side.”

“I was late, I had no time to get a ticket. What time does the next train go to Hartford?” she murmured, brokenly, lifting appealing eyes to his.

“I will find out for you,” he said, feeling quite compassionate toward her, though she was neither young nor pretty, and therefore had no legitimate claim to a stranger’s protection.

He conducted her to the waiting room and presently returned from the ticket office with the information that she would have to… 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?