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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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A Detective's Story

How He was Convicted and Sent to State Prison

In my profession as a detective I have often been asked if I believed in the virtue of circumstantial evidence. In every instance I have replied in the affirmative. While the profession may make a man hard-hearted and anxious to convict, it is nevertheless a certain fact that a complete chain of circumstantial evidence against a criminal will settle his case sooner than half a dozen respectable witnesses. Lawyers can browbeat and confuse, and the veracity of a witness can be slurred or impeached, but when you strike against a circumstance it is not so easy to step over it or explain it away.

Many years ago, when I was a young man of eighteen, I ran away from my uncle, to whom I was apprenticed. He had a farm near Liverpool, Medina County, O., and he was a man who had not one jot of pity for or mercy on man and animal. His wife lived in mortal fear of him, and a look from him would make children tremble. Our family lived a hundred miles away, and we knew little or nothing of Uncle Jabez. He came out on a visit, seemed to take a liking to me, and gave my father one hundred dollars to apprentice me for three years. I liked farm work, and as Uncle Jabez was on his good behavior while visiting us, I was by no means opposed to the arrangement. No sooner had we… 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?