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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 Blue Trooper

A Tale of Circumstantial Evidence

by G.G.H.

Towards the close of the last century there lived in the quiet little town of Arnhem, in Holland, a widowed lady named Andrecht. Her health had long prevented her mixing much in society, and for sometime previous to that at which our tale begins, the infirmities of age had rendered her a close prisoner in her old-fashioned snugly-furnished house in the Oberstraat. Although in easy circumstances, her style of living had for many years been extremely plain, and at the time we are speaking of, her whole establishment consisted of an elderly female, who discharged the duties of housekeeper, servant, and companion.

In the month of June, the widow allowed herself to be persuaded by her son, who was established as a doctor in a neighboring village, to pay him a short visit. Consultations were held with a neighboring blacksmith, and a magnificent system of bolts and bars was the result; so strong, indeed, was the confidence reposed in it by the old lady and her maid, that it never occurred to them to ask a neighbor to “keep an eye” upon the premises until their return. The house was, therefore, locked up and left alone. In order, however, that the reader may appreciate the importance of the many apparently trifling circumstances in the drama he is about to witness, it may be will for him to have an outline of the leading features of the locality which was the scene of it.

Parallel to the Oberstraat, and in the rear of the houses on the side of Madame Andrecht’s was a canal, the towing-path of which was separated from the gardens of the several dwellings by a thick hedge. The widow’s house (which, by the way, was of… 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?