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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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The Victim of a Plot

Not many years ago, a lady, whom I had known long and well, fell a victim to selfishness. Young, beautiful, accomplished, she had many friends. She was married to a gentleman whom she loved devotedly. Previous to her marriage, in order to support a widowed mother, she connected herself with a fashionable millinery establishment, and by her cultivated taste and exquisite skill, soon rendered herself indispensable. Although retired from society, there were many in it who still remembered her as the accomplished daughter of a wealthy merchant, honoring her independence of character and applauding her filial piety. In time she won the affection of the gentleman whom she subsequently married, and, much to the surprise and dissatisfaction of her employer, announced her intention of speedily withdrawing from the establishment. Every inducement was offered her to change her resolution. It was frankly admitted that her place could not be supplied; the lady said that custom would desert her, and ruin would follow on the heels of the separation. These considerations induced her to remain until her place could be supplied; but it did not interfere with the marriage—that took place as announced. Finding that the lady was determined to go, the proprietress conceived the most bitter dislike for her, while yet maintaining an appearance of friendship. The innate selfishness of her nature was aroused, and she thought bitterly of the lady who preferred her own happiness to the interest of her employer. She imagined herself greatly injured, and brooded long and ardently over some plan of revenge. She cared not if it wrecked the character of her victim and destroyed in their bloom all the flowers of her life. Treacherous, vindictive and passionate, her evil mind planned a cruel wrong and carried it out unrelentingly.

The proprietress had in… 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?