That Affair Next Door and Lost Man’s Lane - Softcover

Green, Anna Katharine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082233190X ISBN 13: 9780822331902

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Anna Katharine Green was the most famous and prolific writer of detective fiction in the United States prior to Dashiell Hammett. Her first novel, The Leavenworth Case, was the bestseller of 1878. Green is credited with a number of "firsts" within the mystery genre, including the gentleman murdered as he makes out his will and the icicle as murder weapon. She created the first female detectives in American fiction. Her amateur spinster sleuth, Amelia Butterworth, became the prototype for numerous women detectives to follow, including Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Nosy, opinionated, and tenacious, Amelia Butterworth engages in a sustained rivalry with Ebenezer Gryce, a police detective. In the interaction between these characters, Green developed two more conventions adopted by future generations of mystery writers: the investigation as battle between the sexes and between the professional and the unexpectedly sharp, observant amateur. This volume presents two of Green's Amelia Butterworth tales: That Affair Next Door (1897) and Lost Man's Lane (1898).

About this title

Review

"From the very beginning women writers have been of fundamental importance to the mystery genre, and these highly entertaining works by one of the founding 'mothers' of the American mystery novel demonstrate why. Times may have changed since these books were first published, but good reading never goes out of fashion."--Dean James, coauthor of By a Woman's Hand: A Guide to Mystery Fiction by Women and manager of Murder by the Book (Houston, Texas)

"Move over, Miss Marple! The original spinster sleuth is back, confronting ghostly coaches, nosing into family skullduggery, and tripping over occasional corpses. Three cheers for Amelia Butterworth and her creator Anna Katharine Green."--Elizabeth Foxwell, mystery writer and contributing editor, Mystery Scene magazine

Synopsis

Anna Katharine Green was the most famous and prolific writer of detective fiction in the United States prior to Dashiell Hammett. Her first novel, "The Leavenworth Case", was the bestseller of 1878. Green is credited with a number of 'firsts' within the mystery genre: she developed the tropes of the gentleman murdered as he makes out his will, and the icicle as murder weapon. She created the first female detectives in American fiction. Her amateur spinster sleuth, Amelia Butterworth, became the prototype for numerous women detectives to follow including Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.Nosy, opinionated, and tenacious, Amelia Butterworth engages in a sustained rivalry with Ebenezer Gryce, a police detective. In the interaction between these characters, Green developed two more conventions adopted by future generations of mystery writers: the investigation as battle between the sexes and between the professional and the unexpectedly sharp, observant amateur.This volume presents two of Green's Amelia Butterworth tales out of print for the past one hundred years: "That Affair Next Door" (1897) and "Lost Man's Lane" (1898).

In "That Affair Next Door" a woman is found with her face crushed beyond recognition in the Gramercy Park townhouse of the Van Burnams, a prominent New York merchant family. Amelia Butterworth unravels the social climbing and instances of mistaken identity at the heart of the case. "Lost Man's Lane" follows Amelia Butterworth to a dilapidated mansion in New York State. She has been asked to investigate a series of disappearances around the reportedly haunted house. Before arriving at the truth, Butterworth encounters more strange occurrences: a midnight burial, imprisonments, secret staircases, and a ghostly carriage.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 082233190X
• ISBN 13: 9780822331902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 452