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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 Black Satin Gown; or, Murder Will Out

by John Ross Dix

“Did I ever tell you about that curious murder in Bermondsey, and how I found out all about it—ay, and nabbed the criminals into the bargain?”

“No,” replied I; “but 'twas a singular affair, so far as I am acquainted with the particulars.”

“I should say it mi—much more curious than half the stories you read in papers and magazines. Lord bless you, sir! We detectives see so many things in our line of business, that we could furnish a dozen story-tellers with better materials than they could trump up, if they harassed their brains till doomsday."

“No doubt,” I observed; “but suppose we have these glasses filled—and then, .perhaps, you'll tell me all about the matter. What will you take?”

“Wall, sir, I'll have a little gin and water. I’ve to see a lady respecting a jewel robbery, this evening, and so must not take anything stronger—d'ye see * But, Lor' bless you! There are times when I'm obliged to drink grog by the painful. I've got to accommodate myself to all sorts of company.”

The speaker was Mr. Digg, a member of the London detective force. Never mind how I got to know him; enough to say that we were on pretty intimate terms, and that we were cosily sitting together in my apartment at the Golden Cross—Charing Cross. Mr. Digg was a middle-sized, sharp-faced man, with a keen gray eye that seemed to take in everything at a glance. Nothing was too small to escape his notice, and no Indian ever surpassed him in the perseverance and certainty with which he would follow up a trail when he had once “struck “it.

“One morning,” said the detective, "just as I was about sitting down to an early breakfast, congratulating myself on having a day of rest— for I had only come home from the North the evening before—a messenger from the chief of our… 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?