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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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Life for a Life

A Detective’s Experience

At no period has fashionable society been so brilliant in New Orleans as in the winter of 1845. Those familiar with it then have not forgotten a young Cuban belle who reigned an acknowledged queen of society. Young, beautiful, and the heiress of untold wealth, it was not surprising that she was sought after and became an object of intense interest, not only to the adventurers who are always in search of a wealthy bride, but the scions of our haughtiest and most aristocratic families. But when to the enumeration of these attractive qualities is added a mind brilliant and fascinating, with a conversational talent rarely equaled, one will not wonder at the success she everywhere met with.

Indeed, few such women as Nina Bartilette are met in a life time. The rich beauty of the topics was hers. Tall and queenly, the majestic figure was faultless in willowy outline and symmetry. There was a nameless grace in everything she said and did. The large, black eyes were lustrous, fathomless; and the purplish black hair, long and shining, would have rivaled the mythical tresses of Bernice herself. She had the happy faculty of so dispensing… 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?