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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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An Extraordinary Story of a Female Blue Beard—Fascinations and Crimes of a Beautiful Fiend

An extraordinary tale, gravely told by Peuchet in his Memoires Tires des Archives de la Police, has just been made the subject of a drama at one of the boulevard theaters, under the title of Syrene de Paris. At the time when M. de la Reynie was Lieutenant-General of Police under Louis XIV, a great sensation was caused at Paris by the mysterious disappearance of not fewer than twenty-six young men, aged from seventeen to twenty-five, belonging to noble or wealthy families. Among the common people the report was spread that the young men had been murdered by a foreign princess, in order that she might take baths of their blood to cure herself of a liver complaint! The matter at last became so serious that Louis XIV complained of it to M. de la Reynie, and the latter consulted one of his ablest agents, named Lecoq. This person at once suspected that the young men must have fallen into some snare set for them by female charms, and he employed a natural son of his own, a handsome and intelligent young man, to try and discover the mystery.

This young man, whose name was Exupere, was sent, splendidly dressed, every day, to the Tuileries, the Place Royale, and the Luxembourg, which were then the places of fashionable resort. At length he saw in the Tuileries a young lady of marvelous beauty, attended by an aged female, and his looks expressed his admiration. She seemed far from displeased, and at length her attendant, accosting him, said that she was a Polish princess of the name of Jabirouska, immensely rich, and that as she was much struck by him, she would perhaps allow him to visit her. The young man declared that he had conceived a violent passion for the lady, and after some… 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?