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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 Ball at Dithmar’s

A Thrilling Story

The name of Dithmar has been known in N— almost from its foundation, and members of that family had filled with honor many responsible positions in its gift. At the time of which I write, the head of the family was one Joseph Dithmar, a retired manufacturer of about sixty, a gentleman of culture as well as fortune. Mr. Dithmar’s household circle, besides himself, then consisted of his wife, by some years his junior, his son, Arthur, a young man of twenty, and two daughters, Helen and Mary. Helen was twenty-six, and though by no means ill-favored, bade fair always to remain a spinster of her own volition.

Mary, on the contrary, though much younger than her sister, did not share this strange aversion to marriage, and that was perhaps the reason that I had maintained for so long my acquaintance with and my friendship for the family. Mary was the belle of N—, and well merited the position on the score both of personal and intellectual beauty. She had numerous gentlemen friends, as was natural, but none that I considered my rivals.

There was, indeed, a certain Harry Duff—a sort of brainless, fashionable popinjay—who aspired to her favor, but his pretensions appeared so ridiculous to me that I did not give either him or them much thought or consideration. Besides, I had old Mr. Dithmar’s favor, and that went a long way toward strengthening my position and my complacency. Mary, too, seemed to lean toward me.

This was the state of affairs, when, one day in the winter of… 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?