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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

Select Story

A Dreadful Case

“Gems!” he exclaimed, the expression of his countenance changing from that of the reflective sage, I was going to say, to one that was almost miserly. “Ah, now you talk of something I understand. They are not watching us, are they?” he broke off, looking nervously in the direction of the house.

“No, no,” said I, with subdued excitement, wondering what was to happen next.

He deliberately unbuttoned his long ulster coat, shivering in the cold winter air as he did so; then he began to fumble at a belt which he wore. Several diamonds of great value, as I judged, in a moment more sparkled before my astonished eyes. He had apparently drawn them from a little leather pocket curiously concealed beneath this belt.

“Ah! those are gems, if you like, sir,” he exclaimed, with an exulting chuckle, which brought to my mind the impression created at our first interview, that he was not quite right in his head.

“They are splendid,” I said; “but why do you carry them about with you? Suppose any one, dishonestly inclined, were to learn that an elderly man had property of such value upon him? The thought of it makes me tremble, sir.”… 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?