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

Written for the Prairie Farmer

Guilty or Not Guilty

by Eben E. Rexford

“I can tell you this much, Kitty Warner, I’m not the man to be twisted around any woman’s little finger, as suits her fancy. You must either break off your flirtation with Max Fielding, or consider the engagement which has existed between us, null and void. I’ve stood on one side and looked on long enough. Everybody is talking about you and Fielding, and yesterday I overheard one man say to another in the street, ‘I wonder how Rosevelt likes the way matters are working? I should think he’d begin to get jealous!’ Such remarks are not very pleasant.”

“Ah?” Miss Warner said, with a trifle of sarcasm in her voice. “You are too sensitive, Paul! I don’t care what people say about me. They will talk, and I always think that when they are talking about me, they are letting some one else alone, and think no more about the matter. What’s the use?”

“You may laugh if you choose,” Paul Rosevelt answered, icily. “To me it is no laughing matter. If you have tired of me, say so, and you shall be released at once, I don’t want to intrude. If you prefer Max Fielding, you are welcome to him, and I shall not stand between you.”

“Very kind, indeed,” Kitty said, patting the woolly head of the King Charles spaniel.

“Kitty!” Paul’s tone was full of anger, “Will you tell me once for all whether you wish to be free from our engagement or not?”

“If you are so anxious to break it, I’ve no objections,” said Kitty, very coolly.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Paul in anger, “You’re enough to try the patience of a saint, and you know well enough I’m not one.

“You’re just right, there,” answered… 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?