Showing results by author "Anna Katherine Green" in All Categories

Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was made to look a fool in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now he gets his own back, introducing 16 tales of detectives whose abilities rival that of the great Sherlock Holmes.

The series of detective stories Anna Katherine Green wrote were among the earliest in the 20th century, and depict modern America and the workings of the police departments. These unfold and are full of the details of a new 20th century world. Initials Only is set in New York, and purveys a certain atmosphere unique to that period. It revolves around the workings of the retired Detective Gryce and his young assistant, Mr Sweetwater. A seemingly unsolvable mystery, the death by apparent suicide of an heiress, is investigated by the two detectives and the New York Coroner.

Horatio Leavenworth is a New York merchant whose material wealth is matched by his eminence in the communityand reputation for good works. He is also the guardian of two striking nieces who share his Fifth Avenue mansion. Mary, her uncle's favorite, is to inherit her uncle's fortune at his death. As this mystery opens, that lamentable event has just occurred. Leavenworth has been shot to death and circumstances point to one of his young wards.

Several girls, all bearing the name "Jenny Rogers", are being killed in the city of New York. In the middle of it, there are two suspects: a famous painter and a visiting stranger, who also happen to bear, in their turn, identical names. Behind it all, the dying wishes of a man and a nefarious plot to lay claim to a matter of millions.

Anna Katherine Green (1846-1935) was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and has been called “the mother of the detective novel”. Her style would influence other writers such as Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Doctor, His Wife and the Clock is the sixth title in her mystery series and is more a novelette compared to her other books. The story features one of her reoccurring characters, Ebenezer Gryce, who is called in to find out who killed a well-loved and respected citizen in a small community where he had no enemies to speak of.

Originally published in 1897, That Affair Next Door is Anna Katherine Green’s eighth book featuring the series detective Ebenezer Gryce and the first to feature the society spinster, Amelia Butterworth. Many consider the nosy Miss Butterworth to be the precursor to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver. The story is told from Miss Butterworth’s perspective as she relates the story of a murdered young woman and how she sets out to unravel the mystery.