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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 Detective's Story

The Greatest Express Robbery Ever Perpetrated in Missouri

The $62,000 Haul from the United States Express Company in 1863—How the Company Got Its Money Back

From the Sedalia [MO] Bazoo

Last week we gave in the Sunday morning Bazoo the particulars of the great express robbery in 1853. The story has been extensively copied, and has attracted the attention of many old expressmen, detectives, etc., some of whom were well acquainted with the details. One night last week it was our good fortune to meet with an old and well-known St. Louis detective, who was on his return from Texas, where he had been “on business.” We suppress his name from prudential reason, and will only say that he had a reputation second to none in the West.

Having been intimately acquainted with him for years, we were soon talking over old times and [events] long since forgotten by many who were contemporaneous with and cognizant of them. During our conversation he abruptly said:

“By the way, I saw that you wrote up that old express robbery of 1853 last Sunday.”

We replied in the affirmative, and asked him if the details were not correct, as we were aware he was perfectly acquainted with them.

“Yes,” he replied, “you were correct in the main; but I can give you

a Story Of An Express Robbery

that happened in our own State in 1863 that lays that entirely in the shade.”

As the reader may well imagine, were all ears and attention, and knowing our… 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?