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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 Mysterious Valise

The Story Told by an Ex-Life-Guardsman

“Sentry, will you kindly keep your eye on my bag for a few minutes? I am going to have a plunge in the Serpentine,” said a well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman to me, one warm summer morning a few years ago, as I was on duty at the park gate of Knightsbridge Cavalry Barracks.

“All right, sir,” I replied. “If I am relieved before your return, I shall hand it over to the next sentry.”

“Oh, I shan't be more than half an hour at the latest, as I must be in the city by nine. I prefer leaving my valise with you; there are so many vagabonds always swarming about Hyde Park, that it is quite possible that one of them might take a fancy to it while I am bathing. It doesn’t contain very valuable property—only a suit of clothes and a few documents ‘of no use to any one but the owner,’ as the saying is. All the same, however, I have no desire to lose it.” So saying, the gentleman turned away, and walked briskly across the park in the direction of the Serpentine.

The request to look after his property did not in the least surprise me, as numerous robberies from the clothing of persons bathing had for some time before been reported to the police. I lifted the bag—upon which the letters W. N. were painted, and which was in the battered condition indicative of having been much tumbled about and placed it behind the low wall that lay between the barracks and the footpath.

The barracks clock struck eight. Fully half an hour had elapsed since the owner of the bag departed, and as yet there was no sign of him; the ‘quarter-past’ was chimed from the neighboring clocks, and still he did not turn up; and, as the minutes passed, I thought to myself that it was time he was looking sharp if he really wished to be in the city by nine.

About half-past eight I perceived a great commotion in the park. Men were rushing from all… 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?