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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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Bogus Detectives and Would-Be Detectives

by Allan Pinkerton

In my upward of a quarter of a century’s detective career many strange circumstances have continually arisen, and are constantly arising, to make the experience of my everyday life both remarkably painful and pleasantly romantic. The position which I occupy gives me an unusual opportunity to see life from the under side, and the worst as well as the best phases of human character are forced upon my notice, until they become, by second nature, a matter for study.

Among the peculiar experiences which are forced upon me are some from a class which have risen directly from the worldwide reputation which has been secured for my agencies and my methods of detection. Many unthinking people have come to believe that there is something mysterious, wonderful, and awful about the detective. All my life, and in every manner in my power, I have endeavored to break down this popular superstition, but it would seem that it could not be done.

Many persons seem to desire to believe that a detective holds some supernatural power, or yet is possessed of some finer instinct or keener perception than other mortals; and hence the bogus detective has the elements of success as a swindler when he even makes the shabbiest pretense of being a detective.

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?