The News

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

Willie’s Earnings

A Story of a Woman’s Devotion

“Wine, grapes, oranges!”

The delicate-looking girl repeated the words slowly and sadly, as she quietly ascended the stairs that led to the sick brother’s room. On the landing she halted a moment to brush off the two great tears that trembled upon her eyelids, and then choking down a sob, she softly opened the door and advanced to the bedside.

The sufferer had fallen into a slight slumber, and the tears that she would have driven back had he been awake to see them, now raining down her cheeks, as she noted how ghastly white was his face, how sunken his eyes, and how thin and pinched were his lips.

“He will, he must die!” she breathed to herself, turning away, she went with a noiseless footstep into the next room; “for how, how can I get the money to buy anything for him that he really needs? Wine, grapes, oranges! Oh, how easy it is for physicians to tell what their patients need—but how terribly, how fearfully hard it is sometimes for their nurses to get it! What can I do, what shall I do?”

“Is Alfred worse?”

“No, darling; at least I think not. The doctor was here a while ago, and said he was doing as well as we could expect. All he needs now is nourishing food.”

“Oh, Willie, if there was only some way that we could get wine, and grapes and oranges!”

And the tears started again.

“Did the doctor say he ought to have them?” And the boy’s eyes opened very wide.

“Yes, Willie; and they cost so much. And then I must pay the rent, and—”

… 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?