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 Trabucayras

by Percy B. St. John

The very morning that gave to the world the narrative in connection with Vigo prison, I called upon my worthy friend Don Gulielmo, who was reading the paper to his very excellent and agreeable wife. He received me with his usual cordiality, and after the ordinary interchange of salutations, observed that, of course, I came in search of ideas. I protested against any so egotistical a project, but as the ex-agent of Don Carlos appeared in reality to have made up his mind to tell a story, I, nothing loth, whatever to hear his reminisce, sealed myself, and prepared to give every attention to his narrative. “I am not,” he said, “about to give you exactly one of my own escapes, but to tell you what I heard from the lips of one who acted in the scene I described. You have heard, doubtless, of the ravages committed by certain banditti of late, who, in Catalonia, have under the name of Trabucayras, earned a very unenviable notoriety. The name is derived from the trabucos, a kind of blunderbuss with which they are armed, and some years back they were organized in a very powerful and strong hand which was the terror of all Catalonia. How I became acquainted with the following adventure you shall hear.

During one of my expeditions, I had occasion to journey from the frontier, and instead of following the high road from Barcelona to Girona, turned off into a path with which I was well-acquainted, and which led me by a shorter route to the same place. It was afternoon when I entered the lane, and I felt that it would be a matter of no small difficulty to reach the termination of my journey, but this was a matter of little moment to me, and I therefore by no means hurried myself. I had a good stock of creature comforts, that same stone bottle which served you and I so often on the prairies, and I was not expected until the morrow. Conscious of this state… 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?