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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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The Monomaniac

There is an old house on Spain street, worm-eaten and decayed, that has been the scene of a strange life’s history. It was built in the old colonial days, and was the residence of a Spanish family of repute. It was a mansion then, and pleasure and luxury held a carnival within its doors. Wealth furnished the magnificently appointed rooms, and a rare taste was displayed in the elegant grounds and costly statues that adorned the lawn. A marble fountain rose in front of the wide gallery, and the flight of marble steps was guarded by a Sphynx wrought with exquisite skill. The wide hall swept back into corridors of rare mechanic art, and the mosaic work upon the walls and ceilings had tasked the elaborate genius of the Florentine and Venetian. In those grand old days many a courtly dame had dispensed the hospitalities of a Spanish noble beneath its roof; within its walls many a scheme was formed to beguile a fair domain from the grasp of France. Castilian grace and the beauty of Andalusia mingled here in youth and age. Then as now the fetters of many a love dream was flung around young hearts; and in all the wide province there were few so bright and beautiful, so lovely as the daughter of the Spanish conqueror. Against the wall of the old picture gallery yet hangs a portrait of the Spanish girl, with eyes like the gazelle, a smile like sunshine, and radiant as a dream.

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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?