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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 Tell-Tale Toothpick

A Story of a Disembarreled Body

New York Mercury

Jesse Ferrett’s den, or room, was a most interesting spot; and Jesse Ferrett’s conversational powers combined truth with delightfully descriptive pictures, associated with criminal history, in which he as a detective had created shares.

A little walnut cabinet contained some odds and ends of testimony bearing value, reminding the treasurer of scenes in which he had mounted to renown and competence.

“Now, there,” said he, “is a bit of wooden toothpick, bitten off square at one end and chewed to a fibrous pulp at the other; would you believe that this innocent thing could bring a man to the dangling end of a rope or drive him into eternity?”

“No telling,” said I, wisely expectant, and adding with judicious flattery, “You fellows are cunning enough to telescope testimony through a dead and stray hair.”

“Yes, but the toothpick! Consider what a very ordinary circumstance a mutilated toothpick is.”

“Sure enough, but I don’t forget that Ferrett is not an ordinary man, even among his colleagues.”

That bit of honest blarney got him, and I got the story. We elevated our feet upon the table after lighting our cigars, and observing a fresh bottle nestling in its icy crush within reach of our hands, he related the story of the toothpick.

“You recollect, it was in the winter of 18— what a hurrah there was about finding a body packed in a barrel? It had been shipped from Chicago prepaid to some little town in Wisconsin, addressed to a name that had no personality, and hence… 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?