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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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Richard Watson

by Thomas Waters

In the paper entitled “A Detective in the Bud,” I incidentally mentioned that my first police experience was obtained in aiding the escape from England of one Watson;—the last was in myself escaping, considerably damaged and with much difficulty, from another Watson,—who, as I limp along the streets, I should (were it not that I brim over with the milk—cream, rather—of human kindness) devote at every broken stumble to the Infernal Gods. And much the rascal,—sitting, sipping, smoking in the Isle of France, I could swear, at this very moment, under the shade of a Calabash-tree, as I have read in a song that some great poet did (Moore, I think) would care for that! He had become remarkably fond of cribbage, the villain; it had grown to be a passion with him. It is so just now with me; and wouldn’t I like to give him one for his nob? The cream of human kindness would not curdle at that. Certainly not! On the contrary, it would smoothly overflow, to the extent of sixpence at the very least, upon the next misérable I might chance to meet.

Enough of preface to a very misérable story, viewed in relation to myself. How the mischief I could have been induced to engage in such an enterprise will ever remain a mystery to me. But the wariest of men do very silly things at times. I accept that consolation for what it is worth.

Richard Watson, it is pretty generally known, was held by those who firmly believed they knew him to have been from his youth upwards a model individual. A Hogarth “Good Apprentice,”—imposture, to culminate in a Lord Mayoralty. Pious, too. Oh! saintly pious! hymn-books, homilies, were his delight. Story-books he never opened— that is to say, was never seen to open; and he was presented with a gold watch, when but nine years of age, by an enthusiastic old lady, for having accurately reckoned up… 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?