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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pivotal nineteenth-century mystery, May 9, 2010
This review is from: The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
I've always been crazy about nineteenth-century fiction, so I can't believe I'm just discovering this author. Anna Katharine Green has drifted into obscurity in recent decades, yet her mysteries were best sellers in her day - and her works influenced both Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
The Leavenworth Case, Green's first novel, was a runaway success. The setting is the palatial Fifth Avenue mansion of millionaire merchant Horatio Leavenworth, found shot to death in his library. At the inquest we meet the two ravishingly beautiful nieces who share Mr. Leavenworth's home.
The coroner quickly establishes some suspicious behavior on the part of Eleanore Leavenworth. Mary Leavenworth, on the other hand, is heir to the victim's vast wealth and benefits from his death. Everett Raymond, the young lawyer looking out for the cousins, will have his hands full protecting them. To complicate matters, he's falling in love with Eleanore.
Green has invented a wonderful detective to grapple with the Leavenworth case. Ebenezer Gryce lacks the penetrating eye of a conventional Victorian detective. He'd rather gaze at a doorknob or a button than look directly at anyone. He's not lean and mean but portly and comfortable. And he's not a gentleman. To overcome this handicap, he makes use of young Mr. Raymond, who can move in society and discreetly learn its secrets.
So we end up with two detectives: Mr. Raymond, who's good at gathering evidence but draws wrong conclusions - and Mr. Gryce, who sets things straight, repeatedly.
The introduction by Michael Sims is excellent. I found it fascinating, for example, that during Green's lifetime The Leavenworth Case was used by Yale to teach its law students the risks of circumstantial evidence.
I loved this book, and I'm going on an immediate search for more mysteries by Anna Katharine Green.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well-Penned, Well-Plotted, January 18, 2011
This review is from: The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 - April 11, 1935) was one of the first Americans to write mysteries that featured a detective, and is also credited with shaping the genre into more legally accurate fiction, as well as inventing both the (new stereotypcial) meddling busybody sleuth and girl detective.
The Leavenworth Case (her first novel), is a complex mystery with a well penned and well planned plot. It takes many twists and turns, but none unbelievable or contrived, and arrives at a solution at once surprising, satisfying, and obvious from the beginning if the read had been looking in the right direction.
Loosely, the plot of The Leavenworth Case is that Horace Leavenworth is found murdered in his locked library. Naturally, his household is suspected, and evidence points to one of his nieces, Eleanor.
The narrator is a young lawyer, Mr. Raymond, who has no experience is mysteries or murders. The police detective, Mr. Gryce, enlists Raymond's help because he is a gentleman, and as such will be welcome in places that Gryce would not be. While Raymond hates the thoughts of playing spy, he has become extremely interested in protecting Eleanor's reputation, so agrees. All the clues and information the reader sees are what Raymond sees, so at times, the reader is deducing (like Raymond) without all the facts. As new information comes to light, Raymond has to fit that into his hypotheses, or scrap it all together and form a new one--and so does the reader.
The Leavenworth Case was a most satisfying mystery, and kept me guessing til the end. I was certain I knew who the guilty party was time and time again. Time and time again I had to reform my ideas around new information. The clues and misinformation did not feel contrived at all, rather it came about very naturally, as one would expect during the course of a police investigation.
Not only does The Leavenworth Case provide a meaty mystery; in it, one sees a very clear picture of life among certain classes in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century.
Given both the quality of the mystery, and the slice of history it gave, I look forward to reading many more of Green's mysteries.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A charming, interesting and funny (ironic) story, September 21, 2010
This review is from: The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
This book tells the story of the murder of Mr. Leavenworth in his house in New York around the middle of 1800. The murder is resolved in the classical Sherlock Holmes style, but the book was published in 1878, some years before Conan Doyle published his first novel with Sherlock Holmes in 1887. Green must have constructed the novel with the purpose of entertaining her readers in many ways; among the main characters are two young ladies, one is glorious "..I beheld a glorious woman" the other "a beautiful creature", (p. 41-42). Their relationships evolve during the story, and many readers at that time, and maybe at present, will recognize their feelings, although not how they are expressed. Green also uses satiric elements, I believe, as she employs the rules and conventions that must have been present at that time for what they are worth. For example, on the notion of what a gentleman is: "as this latter was undoubtly a gentleman" (p. 83) and ".(you) were born one (gentleman) perhaps. Can even ask a lady out to dance without blushing, eh?" (p. 104). Many sentences throughout the book are worth remembering. I liked this one: "I am not a bad man; I am only an intense one". I believe that the story also tells the story on how it was to live in New York around 1860 ties but with an understatement. Although the story is told by a man, I am not sure it could have been written by a man. The book is charming because it reflects its time in a gentle manner, it is interesting because it shows us that, yes, our worldview has changed since 1860ties, and it is funny because the characters balance between caricatures and real persons, but almost always on the real side.
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