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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 Accusing Picture

by Judge Clark

The tragic event which left violet Malvern an orphan, occurred some three years before the time at which our story opens.

In the hour of her bereavement, a kind old uncle had come and taken her to his home; where it was, while yet in deep affliction, that she was first seen by Arthur Wolcott.

No charm appeals more warmly to a generous, youthful fancy, than that which grief lends to beauty. At the first glance of Violet’s sweet, pensive face, Arthur Wolcott’s heart was filled with sympathy and admiration.

Once or twice only did they meet in the brief period before his return to college to begin his last year. But short as the time had been, it had sufficed for the growth of feelings which the ardent young student would not have departed without declaring, had he not felt that so to do would be to profane a sacred sorrow.

When he came again, it was to find that Violet’s uncle had taken her to spend some years abroad. In time, Arthur, too, was seized with the desire to see foreign lands. So it chanced that in Paris, three years after their first meeting, he and Violet met again.

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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?