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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 Mysterious Burglar

by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

“Did I ever tell you of the strange thing that happened to me some three years since?” asked my friend L——, as I sat in his store one stormy afternoon, when it was too bad for customers to venture out. I assured him he had never told me anything of the kind, and he proceeded to give me the following story:

“Perhaps you remember what a panic there was in this part of the city, some three years ago, caused by several daring burglaries. Three stores, very near me, had been entered, and the safes broken open and robbed. But as I lived with my family directly over my store, I had not so much fear, though, I must say, I entertained some feelings not very pleasant. One day, during the excitement, an agent for a safe manufacturing company—for Wilder’s patent—came into my store to banter me to take one of his safes. I had one of the old-fashioned kind, but I had great confidence in it, for the lock was stout and curious. To convince me that my safe was not safe, the agent went at work to pick the lock, which he did in about five minutes.

“But this did not convince me. I knew that he could pick any lock, and I told him so; but he got the upper hands of me. He made me go over to B. & S.’s, and see a safe he had put in for them, and I was so pleased with it, that I finally told him he might bring me one, if he would exchange and allow me a fair price for mine. This he promised to do; but I could not have my safe under two weeks, as he had orders filled for as many as could be got off before that time. However, I was to have my new safe in two weeks.

“That night I put my money in my old safe, and locked it up. There was over six hundred dollars in all—some in a pocketbook, and some in the drawer; and as I turned the key, and slid the secret knob over the hole, I wondered if any burglar could get in there. But the next morning… 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?