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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 Prison Mazas

by William Russell

Near the site of the ancient Bastile stands the modern Bastile Mazas, into the long before prepared cells of which the Paris Police on the morning of the 2nd of December, 1851, thrust a “fournée” of the most distinguished men in France— Statesmen, Savans, Generals—many of them surprised in, and stolen out of their beds.

The formality of “lettres de cachet,” was not observed upon that occasion. The Prince-President’s verbal order conveyed to us through De Maupas, the Prefect of Police, would have been quite sufficient warrant to shoot as well as seize the proscribed men. It will be the same again whenever the Senate or Corps Lêgislatif shall presume to abuse, in their master’s opinion, the week or so’s liberty of speech graciously accorded to them. “Do not be alarmed,” wrote an acquaintance of mine from Paris on the 16th of March last, to a Bonapartist pur sang. “Do not be alarmed by Plichon speeches. There are always Mazas and Cayenne.”

Yes, Mazas and Cayenne are always there, and I have now to relate how it happened that I, a Detective Officer, whose political creed might have been summed up in one sentence—“zealous obedience to the power capable of enforcing obedience,” incurred and escaped the hazard of being found incarcerated in the prison, and next shipped off to the pestilental penal settlement.

To do so, I must go back to 1849, towards the close of which year I engaged a lodging in the Rue Neuve, Saint Eustache. In the same house dwelt Madame Colbert, her twin sons, Albert and François Colbert, and Louise, wife of Albert. François was a working goldsmith; Albert a watchmaker, skilled in a branch of the manufacture much better remunerated than other portions of watch-work. Their age was five or six and twenty, and as the families boarded together, and the young men were expert workmen,… 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?