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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

Select Story

A Detective’s Experience

A Betrayed

“One evening, Mr. J—— and myself,” said Mr. F——, “were sent for to see a lady at one of the principal hotels. The message disclosed no name or any clue to her purpose in sending for us. But the words evinced hurry and some little excitement. We went at once. Shown to the apartment of the lady, we were met by a young creature, scarcely twenty, but disclosing in her hard, sternly set features an experience which few of her age and sex ever encountered. The face itself was dark and gipsy-like, with large black eyes and regular features, which, when animated by pleasure or flushed by the fever of excitement, must have been surprisingly beautiful. Now they were marble-like. No trace of emotion played upon them; no smile hovered on the lips. Only the eyes gleamed with a strange, wild fire, and the muscles of the face sometimes twitched nervously. Her form was tall and graceful, and lithe as a willow; and when she spoke to us, with the graceful courtesy of one long accustomed to the refinements of life, her accents were musical, and the charm of her manner won upon the heart.

“I have sent for you gentlemen,” she said, “to see if you can… 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?