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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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A Railroad Detective’s Story

“Yes, it was a mysterious affair,” said detective Rollins; “but I had little trouble in working up the case, although I was some time in finding the chain to which belonged the broken link that I had discovered. It all came about in such a queer way that if I should live a thousand years I should not forget it.”

“Well, that’s no way, Dick,” cried Uncle Billy Franklin, the genial Master of Transportation, after waiting a long time for Rollins to continue—“that’s no way of getting over the road. But it’s just like men in your business; stirring up one’s dormant curiosity, and exciting one’s expectations, so they settle themselves back for something good or not, as the case may be, only to be placed on nettles by long pauses, like that in which you are now indulging. Come, drop a little sand, pull her wide open, and take a run at the hill of your story.”

“Aye, aye, Dick!” exclaimed Jack Sprague, “You’ve bulletined for that yarn, so pull out, my boy.”

“You should be the last man to hurry an engineer, Jack,” replied Rollins; “either of one of the ‘company’s kettles’ or a story. In either case one is compelled—if he does not wish to run the risk of breaking down, or ‘sticking’ on some hard pull—to examine the machinery, dropping a little oil here and there, where there is danger of wear or rust, and after satisfying himself that his guides, cross-heads and eccentrics are all O.K., pull ahead, as I now propose doing, with a clear track, a good fire, plenty of water and fuel, and a good train… 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?