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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 Story

The Sad Surprise from which He Never Fully Recovered

I was over at the Central station yesterday and met one of the detectives who was off duty. In a ramble he wound up with this story:

“I sometimes tire of the business. It is such a succession of surprises that any man who sticks to it, unless he is a hardened creature, must sooner or later break down with nervous prostration. I had one of these surprises once from which I have never fully recovered.

“There was a man who held an honorable place in a railroad office. Besides being trusted and faithful, he was one of the biggest-hearted men I ever knew. To come in contact with him was to feel that one was younger—to feel that there was something in life worth living for. When I knew him I was a boy. I used to go to his train to meet him and carry his band-bag for him just to be in his company. When I became of age I drifted into this business, and have been in it ever since. One day I was in the police court waiting for my case to come up—one that I had against some poor devil. The clerk was calling the docket in a solemn sort of way. He came to one name in the list which was familiar to me. After be had called it the officer to whom the arrest was credited stepped up before the court and said in a mechanical sort of way, I thought, “‘Found dead this morning in his cell.’

“The judge drew a mark across the name on the docket and said:

“‘So far as the jurisdiction of this court is concerned this case is settled… 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?