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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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Ledfoot’s Plot

"A gentleman by the name of Ledfoot, sir, would like to speak with you, if you please,” said my old housekeeper, one afternoon, standing with the dining-room door in her hand.

“Ledfoot?” I repeated. “Don’t know the name. Ask him in.”

A middle-aged man of ruddy and cheerful countenance, with plentiful light hair,—except on a very marked bald patch, smooth and shiny, on the top of his head,—a good deal of sandy beard, shot with gray, and restless little gray eyes, set deep in under a fat forehead fringed with very prominent eyebrows, was shown into the room.

“I have ventured to call,” he began, oddly screwing up his left eye into a smile, whilst the rest of his face was inscrutably passive, “in search of apartments."

“My good sir,” said I, “I don’t let lodgings, and there are but two houses, besides this, in Clumpington big enough to afford you accommodation, and I am certain neither of their owners would entertain the question."

Besides, I was quite amazed to think of any one wanting lodgings in Clumpington,—a little lonely Hampshire hamlet on a large expanse of heath, whither it had occurred to no one hitherto to come in search of change. We have not twenty houses in the village, not a single shop (for we get all our necessaries from the neighboring town of Clayington), no lawyer, no doctor (thank goodness, the place is too healthy to keep one), and a parson only once a fortnight. There is nothing to see but undulating miles of purple heather and golden-blossomed gorse, and the clump of firs which gives its name to the place.

“I hope I have not made a mistake,” the gentleman continued, “but an acquaintance of mine in London—Mr.… 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?