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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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Breaking up a Gang: A Detective Story

by Emerson Bennett

If there has been a period, since money became a circulating medium, in which rascals have not dishonestly sought to flourish by counterfeiting, I am not aware of it—certainly no such millennial forbearance had existed in my day and recollection. Thirty years have I been authoritatively engaged in detecting crime, and at least two thirds of my efforts have been directed against forgers, counterfeiters, coiners, and passers of spurious money. Of course I have seen brought about some curious developments in my time, and more than once I had reason to thank God that some adventure of my own did not terminate with my life.

Some years ago, it matters not how many, several of the leading banks of the country, located in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, made a startling discovery at the same time, not only that an immense number of counterfeit issues of their respective institutions had been suddenly put in circulation, but that they were so perfectly executed as to have deceived, in many instances, the officers themselves. This alarming state of affairs led to the conclusion that there must be a large organization of the most adroit scoundrels at work in concert, which would require all the detective skill in the country to ferret out and suppress; and every man of any note in this line of business was forthwith called upon to act, my humble self among the number.

The first important matter, according to my view, was to trace some of these notes to the first circulators, and then lay some plan to get into their confidence, and gradually work my way back to the principals. There was, to begin with, at least one man whom I had reason to suspect of having something to do in this line, and I resolved to make the most of him. He was, more apparently, than anything else, a liquor dealer, lived in Boston, and knew me by sight… 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?