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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 Adventure

by H. C. Davis

I had just stepped into a cafe to refresh myself with a cup of coffee and a roll, when a billet was handed to me by a messenger, which contained a request for my presence at head-quarters. Hastily finishing my lunch, I was soon on my way. Arrived at the bureau, I found a despatch awaiting me from the magistrate of the little village of Mayonne, situated in the far out-skirts of the city. It was an earnest and peremptory demand for my services in an undertaking purporting to be one of great difficulty and danger, and which was no less than the ferreting out the perpetrators of a foul murder which had just been committed, and to whom no clue could be obtained. To this was attached a postscript which exhorted me to come in the shortest possible time, and in disguise.

I was in the habit of receiving such summons as these, and equally in the habit of instantly obeying the mandates of duty, so it was not long before I was on my way, dressed in the holiday costume of a marketman, well provided with weapons and tools and an extra stock of clothing.

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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?