The Dead Letter and The Figure Eight [Paperback]

Metta Fuller Victor (Author), Catherine Ross Nickerson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2003

Before Raymond Chandler, before Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie, there was Metta Fuller Victor, the first American author—man or woman—of a full-length detective novel. This novel, The Dead Letter, is presented here along with another of Victor’s mysteries, The Figure Eight. Both written in the 1860s and published under the name Seeley Regester, these novels show how—by combining conventions of the mystery form first developed by Edgar Allan Poe with those of the domestic novel—Victor pioneered the domestic detective story and paved the way for generations of writers to follow.

In The Dead Letter, Henry Moreland is killed by a single stab to the back. Against a background of post–Civil War politics, Richard Redfield, a young attorney, helps Burton, a legendary New York City detective, unravel the crime. In The Figure Eight, Joe Meredith undertakes a series of adventures and assumes a number of disguises to solve the mystery of the murder of his uncle and regain the lost fortune of his angelic cousin.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The first American author, male or female, to write a full-length novel of detection was a Victorian-era woman, Metta Fuller Victor. Another nineteenth-century woman author, Anna Katherine Green, invented the amateur spinster sleuth, whose progeny are legion, ranging from Agatha Christie's Miss Marple to a gaggle of contemporary cozy heroines on both sides of the Atlantic. Green achieved any number of detective fiction firsts, including the first use of an icicle as murder weapon.

Duke University Press has reissued four long out-of-print novels by these trailblazers. These books won't break out on any best-seller lists, but they are valuable for illuminating the development of the crime novel, the constrictions of the Victorian age that planted the seeds of feminism, and for showing the centrality of women in popular fiction. They are also pretty fun to read, sort of like cruising through hoary melodramas or dime novels. Green's spinster sleuth, Amelia Butterworth, investigates the murder of a young woman in the house next door and the mystery of a haunted mansion. Butterworth is an old snoop but a crafty one. Readers will cringe at the condescension of Ebenezer Gryce, the first police detective to sneer at a woman detective. The reissued Victor novels have male narrators, much concern over contemporary politics (post-Civil War confusion figures prominently in The Dead Letter), and page-turning action. Scholar Catherine Ross Nickerson provides introductions to both books, making a resounding case for the importance of these women in the development of the mystery. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“From the very beginning women writers have been of fundamental importance to the mystery genre and these highly entertaining works by two 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)

“Sinister governesses sleepwalk, wronged young men vow revenge, and mysterious deathbed messages appear in two rediscovered Gothic gems from Metta Fuller Victor. Fans of Louisa May Alcott's thrillers will devour these inventive tales from a pioneer in American detective fiction.”—Elizabeth Foxwell, mystery writer and contributing editor, Mystery Scene magazine

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (August 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822331659
• ISBN-13: 978-0822331650
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,134,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two forgotten classics of detection, September 30, 2010

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Patto (Vermont) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dead Letter and The Figure Eight (Paperback)

I encountered the name of this author as an aside in the preface of another book. To think I might never have read her otherwise! Metta Fuller Victor is an utterly charming, highly accomplished writer and an important figure in the history of detective fiction. With these two books she gave America its first full-length detective novels.

In THE DEAD LETTER (1867), a young man handsome, rich and universally esteemed is stabbed in the back shortly before his wedding. There's a great tangle of tragic coincidences, dark passions and cunning machinations to probe before we learn the whole truth of the matter. Luckily the infinitely patient Mr. Burton takes on the investigation.

Burton is a wonderful gentleman-detective, sensitive to auras of good and evil, brilliant at analyzing handwriting and decoding messages, physically powerful and magnetic. His unofficial assistant in this case is the number-one suspect.

In THE FIGURE EIGHT (1869), a loveable, eccentric middle-aged doctor is poisoned in his library, having just returned home rich from the goldmines of California. His fortune in gold bullion disappears overnight, leaving his daughter and young wife penniless. Almost everyone assumes his scamp of a nephew, Joe Meredith, did it. Joe must solve the mystery or live in hiding all his life.

Among the many interesting characters, my favorite is the conniving governess, ever in danger of betraying terrible secrets when she sleepwalks.

In these novels, Victor draws elements from the gothic tale, the adventure story and domestic fiction to achieve emotionally gripping, psychologically complex mysteries. Her detective novels influenced Anna Katherine Green, who in turn influenced Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the evolution of detective fiction.