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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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What's in a Name?

What I Suffered by Changing Mine

A change of name is sometimes made the condition on which a man may obtain rank and fortune; and a change of name was of greater consequence still to me,—it was the means of throwing me into prison, and of making me assume the character of a malefactor.

I was born and “raised” in a beautiful little town in the south of England, and at the age of twenty-three I came to America. The cause of my coming is not material to the story I have to tell, and therefore I need say little regarding it. Suffice it that a scene with my father about my expenses at college—for I was a student of medicine, and not at all careful about money matters—led to a coolness between us which eventuated in my leaving his house. I determined to make my own way in the world, although I had not quite finished the study of my profession; and, thinking that the United States presented a good field for me, I made my preparations for coming here. My father gave me ₤100, with a sharp intimation that I need not hope for any further from him.

On my arrival in Liverpool I found that one of the Inman steamers was to sail next day. Partly for the sake of economy—for I wished to save as much of my money as possible,—and partly because I thought that, as I might have to rough it in America, I might just as well commence at once, I took a passage in steerage, giving my name as… 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?