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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 Smart Young Man

An After-Dinner Colloquy—And Its Result

by George McWatters

From one of the public journals we clipped the accompanying spicy article; we have lost our notes, and have forgotten from which, or we should duly credit it to the proper source. We discover that we have “pencilled” it “1862,” and presume that it first appeared in that year. Our readers will pardon its somewhat “swelling” style in sundry places, but it exemplifies Officer McWatters’ quick and acute perceptions, and his character as a detective, and we therefore give it place.

Young Man Of Large Appetite And Small Conscience. —The necessity of eating is a strong one; the demands of appetite are peculiarly and pertinaciously potent. There are many fleshy-looking young men in New York whose appetital demands are largely ahead of their pecuniary resources, the latter being of a limited nature, like their consciences. One leading hotel diners are appreciatively affected by these unconscionably-stomached and conscienceless individuals; and it requires all the devices of the proprietors, and ingenious watching of sharp-sighted detectives, to guard against their stealthful appropriation of dinners. In the multiplicity of guests daily arriving at first-class hotels, and multiplied disguises assumed by the unpaying diners, it is easy to conceive that the labor of watchfulness is no light one, and the guarantee of detectives by no means sure. There is no keener man in the Police Department to scent out a rogue than Officer McWatters. He can tell a rascal by a sort of instinct. A stranger to him is like a piece of coin in the hand of the skilful medallist, who tells the spurious from the genuine by the feeling—by a glance even.

Officer McWatters measures a man… 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?