The News

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

Murdered Himself

About half a mile from the village of Oposura, Mexico, facing the high road, and separated from the river Yagua by a belt of trees, there stood some years ago a long, low cottage known as La Bolsa. Senor Rodriguez, who was a squarely-built, clean-shaven man of about 40, with gray hair, moustache and goatee, and with nothing remarkable about him except a deep cut over his right eyebrow, had now been occupying the cottage for a little over a year. Considerable speculation was indulged in as to whom Rodriguez was and what he did for a living. He never volunteered any information on the score, but on one occasion he was heard to say something which led to the inference that he had been a sea captain, and on the strength of it the residents of the village called him the captain.

About this time the captain had got into trouble. He owed his landlord and the village tradesmen in the neighborhood of $500, and the patience of his creditors was nearly exhausted, when one day they received a letter from the captain in which he wrote that he would satisfy their claims on the following Monday, as a legacy left by a distant relative had been paid into his account at the village bank.

On Saturday the captain came into town, met his landlord’s son, chatted pleasantly with the young man and invited him to accompany him to the bank. He remained at the bank about ten minutes, and came out at the end of that time, buttoning into the breast pocket of his coat a fat-looking pocket-book. He then went straight home, after making a few purchases and bidding the young man good-day.

On Sunday morning the villagers were startled by the announcement made by the captain’s servant at the police station that her master had been murdered the night before and robbed. The inspector and the whole available police force of the village, consisting of two policemen, set off for La Bolsa to unearth 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?