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

The Imprint of a Thumb

Which Caused the Confession of a Thief and Puzzled a Detective

A Strange Story of the Pennsylvania Oil Region -- An Occurrence Hard to Account For

Since the organization of the society for Psychical Research, in London, England, and similar associations in America, more attention is being paid than in many years to occurrences which were formerly classed as mere coincidences unworthy of more than a passing notice. Thoughtful people are trying to explain upon scientific theories which but a few years ago were dismissed with the remark that they were “very singular,” or that they were “those things which no one can account for.” The phenomena of thought transference which have resulted from numerous carefully conducted experiments have done more, perhaps, to arouse interest in matters of this sort than any other known cause. This thought, says the St. Louis Republican, was suggested by a conversation which occurred Tuesday in the office of Mr. Thomas Furlong. Mr. Furlong related the following incident, which has at least one peculiar feature.

“It was in 1870, I think,” said he, “that an event occurred which was one of the first things that made me think that perhaps I would make a detective, and yet, as you will see, I was entitled to no credit in the transaction, for it was a mere ‘scratch.’ I had just been appointed chief of police of Oil City, Pa. I am not quite certain about the year, but it was somewhere between 1868 and 1870. There was a farm known as the ‘Blood farm,’ situated on the bank of Oil creek, about five miles from Oil City, and it was one of the finest and most productive farms in the oil country between 1864 and 1868. It had a number of fine… 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?