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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

The Confidential Clerk

by A Retired Member of the Detective Police [William Russell]

No.— Broadway,

March 15, 185—

“Messrs. Barton Brothers would be glad to see Mr. Barker at his earliest convenience, respecting a matter in which they require the aid of his services.”

The above note was put into my hands while I was hanging about the City Hall one morning, waiting the arrival of some of my shadows, who were out on a little affair that made a considerable noise at that time.

I lost no time in proceeding to Broadway, where I had an interview with the principals, at which the confidential clerk was also present.

“Good-morning Mr. Barker. You are very prompt. Greatly indebted to you. We have been very much annoyed lately from missing a large quantity of valuable goods, silks, satins, laces, furs, and other articles, amounting to several hundred dollars; and, although we have for some time kept a strict watch upon those we employ, we have been unable to attach suspicion to any one upon a good foundation. All our young men have been in our employ for some years, and are very steady and respectable. I said all, but should except two, who have only been with us a couple of months or so.”

“Is there any peculiarity in the goods you have lost, gentlemen?” I asked. “Could you identify them if you were shown them again?”

“We could only identify them by our own private marks upon them. If these were removed they would be just the same… 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?