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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

Select Story

A Detective’s Experience

A Female Forger

Not many years ago, said Mr. F , the mercantile community were annoyed by an immense amount of spurious paper most industriously put into circulation. Checks were presented at the principal banks signed by the firms of prominent houses, and money in the aggregate amounting to nearly $50,000 obtained upon it. The peculiar circumstances of the case disclosed the fact that the forger resided in the city, and for months we were on the quivive to detect the criminal. Every new face, every stranger, whose occupation and pursuit were not thoroughly understood, were subjected by Mr. I and myself to a most rigid scrutiny. Still! we were at fault. It is not difficult to find out the who is not guilty of an offence: the trouble is to discover who is. And thus our search went on. Baffled in one direction, we took another. Aside from the reward, which was ample, our pride was interested in detecting the person who, almost before our eyes, practiced such open frauds. One day I saw a lady paying for a bill of goods with a check. Before she had time to leave the store I obtained a look at the paper, and was satisfied it was not genuine. Still I was not certain. The lady was deeply veiled, and I was subjected to the alternative of following her. This I did and traced her home.

It was a beautiful little cottage, with a large yard and garden. Taste and culture had fashioned the gravel walks, and trained the dense but beautiful foliage into parterres, as curious as novel and pretty. Vines crept over the portico and trailed along the network of the gallery. The white and red hollyhock bloomed at the gate, and the margin of the walks was bedded with violets and sweet-scented verbena. The perfume of orange blossoms… 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?