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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 Reminiscence

Every one can imagine how varied in experience is a detective’s life. The two incidents which have already been published, by no means completes the fund of anecdote the reporter has been favored with. It was, therefore, with the same sort of interest one feels in listening to the narrative of an old soldier telling the history of his battles that we heard the following incident repeated:

“Now remember, don’t bother me with questions!”

“Proceed!”

“We had received information that a Sicilian had escaped from Havana and came to this city, bringing with him the proceeds of a large robbery. The reward offered for his apprehension was even greater than usual, since he was regarded as a fierce and desperate criminal. But it was less that than the actual excitement and love of adventure that incited us to the enterprise. If in the city, we well knew he had endeavored to sink his identity in the crowds of his countrymen who swarmed in the lower part of the city like bees around a hive. The peculiarity of their names so difficult to distinguish and the almost perfect sameness of their personal appearance rendered this a matter of easy accomplishment. Besides this, these men have a strange antipathy to the law and its officers. If in their power, they invariably further the escape of one of their countrymen, no… 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?