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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 Mysterious Guests

About six years ago, two Englishmen one day arrived at Calais in the Dover packet. They did not take up their quarters at the hotel of M. Dessein, on which the author of the Sentimental Journey bestowed such celebrity, but went on to an obscure inn, kept by a man of the name of Du Long. They desired to have his best apartments, spent a great deal of money, relished the produce of his wretched kitchen, and thought his adulterated wine perfectly genuine. From day to day Du Long supposed they would continue their journey, and proceed to the capital; for that they had come merely to see Calais, was an idea too absurd to enter anybody’s head. But so far from continuing their journey, and proceeding to the capital, they did not even inspect what was worth seeing in Calais, for except going out now and then to shoot snipes, they kept close at home, eating, drinking, and doing nothing. ‘They may be spies,’ thought the host, ‘or runaways, or fools. No matter—what is that to me? They pay honestly.’ When he was sitting on an evening over a pint with his neighbour and relation the grocer, they used to rack their brains about the mysterious guests. ‘They are spies,’ said the grocer, ‘one of them squints with his left eye;’ ‘A man may squint without being a spy,’ rejoined the host. ‘I should take them for runaways, for they read all my newspapers, probably for the sake of advertisements.’ His kinsman then assured him that Englishmen spend at least a twelfth part of their time in reading newspapers. The conclusion to which they generally came, was, that as the said foreigners were apparently neither spies nor runaways, they could not possibly be anything else than fools. Here the… 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?