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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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The Detective’s Story

How a Chicago Policeman Wooed and Won His Bride in Days of Yore

Chicago Times.

The lieutenant had called the roll of incoming policemen, the second platoon had marched away in the night to stand its six hours’ watch over the fortunes of the city, and quiet once more resumed its reign at Madison street station. Uncle Ben sat at his desk scratching away, with the methodical precision born of twenty years’ experience, at the record of some crime whose perpetrator was behind the bars; Jo, the turnkey, lounged about with his everlasting pipe and his eternal good nature, allowing that the night was “too darned hot for any use,” and a half-dozen or so roundsmen, off duty and tired, were scattered in various attitudes around the office indulging in a social smoke before seeking the rest they so much needed and had so well earned. To this little glimpse, not of Arcadia but of latent power and law-born force, there entered a Times reporter and a detective who, in connection with his “partner,” has earned an enviable reputation for courage, sagacity and success. The two were discussing the various phases of criminal life which a great city like Chicago can hold up to the public gaze and horror, and the man of paper was lamenting the prospect that the dawning Sunday would not yield anything sensational enough to be worthy of an extended “write up.”
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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?