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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

Select Story

A Detective’s Experience

The Missing Jewels

Those who have read the “Moonstone,” said Mr. F., will remember how the experience of Sergeant Cuff, was set at naught by the eccentricities of a dreamer. My own life furnishes an episode somewhat similar to it, but with this difference: The party most interested here was guilty of meditated wrong, while there the effect of imagination and great anxiety united to confound the experience of the great London detective.

A young lady’s jewels had been stolen from her room on Esplanade street, and Mr. I. and myself were sent for to look them up. Arriving at the house, we were shown to the room where the robbery had been committed, and examined it carefully. It was a large, elegantly furnished apartment, and showed no evidence of having been entered by violence. Costly articles belonging to a lady’s toilet were scattered through the room. The jewel case still lay upon the bureau. The light of the morning sun streamed in at the open window, and flashed upon many a rich vase and beautiful trifle. Pictures hung on the wall, and gold and silver work in many a curious and rare device set off the elegance of the chamber. A splendid watch, set with jewels, was left untouched. Rich shawls and laces, and robes of great value, had been… 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?