The News

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 Story

The Ruse Once Employed to Trap a Shrewd Thief

Who Was at One Time Confined In Denver

“Have you been to the county jail lately?’ asked an old-time detective of a News reporter yesterday.

“No, I have not,” was the reply. “What is over there—anything of any account?”

“No, nothing of any importance that I know of. Do you remember an elderly man who was confined there about four or five months ago? He was a Frenchman, I think, and I heard that he had died somewhere in Missouri. He told me something in his history that would make mighty interesting reading, I tell you.”

THE NEWS MAN was eager to know what was the most interesting or remarkable thing the prisoner had told him.

“Well, I’ll tell you all about it. This chap—I’ve forgotten his name—was for a long time in Paris. He was a thief and a slick one, too, or he would have been picked up long before he actually was. The Parisian police, you doubtless know, is one of the most perfect working institutions in the world. It is necessary that it should be so, for in so large and gay a city, the amount of crime committed every day is most remarkable.

“Well, this man, as I told you before, was very clever. The police had had its eye upon him for a long time, but had never been able to detect him in any positive shortcoming. His house had undergone repeated searches without any effect resulting from the most diligent inquiry—nothing even of the most trifling nature could be found to use in evidence against him. Nevertheless he was known to traffic with the thieves, and did confess to me that he had successfully evaded the vigilance of even the secret agents.

“One evening as he was going out of his house and had gone some distance down the street, a gentleman whom he had never before seen stepped up to him and addressed him by a name other than… 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?