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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 Dog and the Assassin

by Mrs. C.A. Soule

While traveling in 1857, through the beautiful city of Leipzig, I observed, about half a league from the gate of the town, a few rods from the highway, a wheel and the bones of a chained corpse exposed to the gaze of every passer.

The following is the history of that criminal, as I learned it from the lips of the Judge who conducted the trial, and condemned him to be broken alive:

A German butcher being benighted in the midst of a forest, lost his way, and while endeavoring to gain the road was attacked by a highwaymen. He was on horseback and accompanied by a large dog. One of the robbers seized the horse by the bridle, while the two others dragged the butcher from his saddle and felled him. The dog immediately leaped upon one of them and strangled him; but the other wounded the animal so severely that he rushed into the woods uttering the most fearful howls. The butcher, who by this time had disengaged himself from the grasp of the second robber, drew his knife and killed him. But at the same moment he received a shot from the third, he who had just wounded the dog, and falling, was dispatched by the thief, who found upon him a large sum of gold, a silver watch and a few other articles of value. He plundered the corpse, leaped upon the horse and fled.

The next morning two wood cutters happening in that path, were surprised to find three dead bodies and a large dog who seemed to be guarding them. They examined them and endeavored to restore life, but in vain.

One of them dressed the wounds of the dog, gave him some food and sought some water for him, while the other hastened to the nearest village to inform the magistrate of the discovery. The officer accompanied by several attendants, was soon on the spot; a surgeon examined the wounds of the three bodies; they drew up a verbal process and interred… 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?