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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 Lucky Larceny

by Judge Clark

Mr. Courtney was a rich old bachelor, and the uncle of a couple of nephews—the one a brother’s, the other a sister’s son. These two were his next of kin, legally entitled, in case he died intestate, to inherit his property.

Edward Horton, his deceased sister’s son, was decidedly his favorite, and to him the old gentleman resolved to give the bulk of his estate.

Charles Courtney, the other nephew, had inherited a handsome fortune from his father, and moreover, by his uncle’s will, was entitled to succeed to that left to his cousin, in the event of the latter’s dying without issue.

Old Mr. Courtney being one of the halest of bachelors, when it was announced, not only that he was dead, but that foul play was suspected, when a post-mortem examination demonstrated that he had fallen a victim to poison; and when it was given out that the hand that administered it was that of his favorite nephew, the public mind was both surprised and shocked.

It was not until Edward Horton had been fully committed for trial for his uncle’s murder, that I was retained for the defense.

His own statement was, in substance, this:

A physician had been called to see Mr. Courtney on occasion of some apparently trifling illness, requiring some simple remedy, for which a prescription was written and handed to the prisoner to have made up. This the latter had carried to a well-known, competent druggist, who had put it up in his presence. The medicine consisted of three white powders, each folded in a scrap of paper, and the whole enclosed in a single wrapper. They were to be given at intervals of an hour, and had remained continuously in the prisoner’s possession till the first was administered, which was done by himself, immediately on his… 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?