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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

by Bill Squibb

The following adventure was narrated to me by an old friend of mine, who had at one time been a detective.

It ran thus:

“I had been nearly three years on the force,” he commenced, “and during that time, I passed through some trying scenes, and on several occasions came near losing my life.

“But the one I am about to relate is the most startling of all.

“It occurred in this manner:

“A band of counterfeiters were flooding the country with counterfeit bills of large denomination, on different banks; and so well were they executed that none but the most competent judges cound detect them.

“So the case was given to me and Jack Findall—another detective—to work up, and if possible discover their rendezvous.

“We had put into practice every stratagem and artifice known to the profession. We were out late and early, at one time prowling at the dead hour of midnight, in places where a man’s life could be sold for a drink; at another, strolling through fashionable art galleries, and loitering along fashionable promenades, watching, listening for the slightest gesture or word which might lead to a clue—but without success; and still the counterfeits were thrown out upon the public.

“Matters went on in this manner for nearly a month; and one morning, after being up all night, Jack and I separated for our respective homes to recruit for another night’s work in a different direction; for he thought that he had the thread in his grasp, which would eventually lead to their discovery.

“Well,… 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?