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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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Leaf the Twenty-Ninth

A Story of a Pack of Cards

by John Williams

In the beginning of the month of June, 18—, I left New York in pursuit of a criminal among the Alleghany Mountains. The weather was very beautiful and all nature decked in her complete spring apparel, offered a thousand charms to a traveller’s gaze.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was not completed at that time, and I made my journey from Baltimore on horseback. After a few days’ journey I reached the foot of the Alleghanies, and commenced my ascent. The scenery through which I passed was wild, and grand. Here I saw immense forests in which perhaps, the foot of man had never trod, and mountain streams forcing their way through precipitous gorges next attracted my attention.

One day I rode five miles without meeting a living soul. Towards evening I reached the hut of a wood-cutter. He received me cordially enough, and offered me a bed, but he knew so little of the country that he could not direct me where to find a shelter for the next night.

The next morning I started at hazard, keeping beside a mountain river as long as I could. At last I left its banks, and after continuing my journey for some hours I fancied I entered into a less wild-looking country.

Already the day began to decline, the setting sun was enveloped in a cloud of gray vapor, and I felt one of those melancholy moods stealing over me which a solitary traveller at the close of day frequently experiences.

Every now and then I cast uneasy glances around me, for I had no idea where I was going. At last I perceived a path before me. My heart beat with hope. It was doubtless one of those paths that are often to be seen through the mountains—paths which always lead the traveller to some hospitable roof.

Soon the lowing of a cow changed my hope into a certainty,… 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?