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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 Ebony Box

Early in June, in the spring of 1855, it chanced that while enjoying my customary ride along the eastern shore of Manhattan, in the vicinity of the ferry of Astoria, I turned off through a narrow lane to the left, and came near to a cottage house, standing midway in front of a well-cultivated garden. There were indications of wealth, or at least of competency, about the place, and an air of neatness and elegance which pleased my fancy, prone as it is to look always at the prosperous, the happy, and the fair. My horse, a livery saddle hack, was struck with equal admiration at the greenness of the grass and herbage within the inclosure, and insisted upon looking at it over the paling. The house of wood, painted of a delicate cream color, with white cornices and window-frames, was neatly covered in some parts with sweetbrier, and the white climbing-rose of our grandparents, now so rarely seen.

The green blinds of the windows were open on the eastern side, and at one of these two heads of flaxen-haired children, with pippin cheeks and roguish eyes, attracted me. They leaned too far out of the window, and the mother had just caught each rather roughly behind; as she drew them back, our eyes met, and I recognized the beautiful face of… 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?