That Affair Next Door and Lost Man's Lane [Paperback]

Anna Katharine Green (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2003

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).

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 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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (November 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082233190X
• ISBN-13: 978-0822331902
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,355,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first spinster detective, September 8, 2010

By 

Patto (Vermont) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: That Affair Next Door and Lost Man's Lane (Paperback)

Miss Marple had an American ancestor: Miss Amelia Butterworth, first fictional spinster sleuth, invented by Anna Katherine Green. These two novels, wittily narrated by Miss Butterworth, were published in 1897 and 1898.

Miss Butterworth is wealthy, keen-witted, minutely observant and utterly self-confident. She moves in the most exclusive New York society and has strict notions of propriety. Despite her outspoken, old-maidish ways, she has a kind heart.

Her debut as an amateur sleuth begins with a murder next door. The highly inquisitive Miss Butterworth notices some questionable activity in the empty mansion adjacent to her residence, and she prods a reluctant policeman into checking it out. Sure enough, there's a dead woman inside.

Sly old Inspector Gryce investigates, and soon he and Miss Butterworth are conducting competing inquiries. The complex case, full of mistaken identities and faulty deductions, is a fertile field for their very different talents. Gryce is finally brought to acknowledge Miss Butterworth's worth.

Which is why he persuades her to investigate Lost Man's Lane.

In a placid little village ninety miles from New York, four men have disappeared walking down a gloomy mountain road. Coincidentally, the three grown children of a (deceased) schoolmate of Miss Butterworth's live in one of the houses along this lane. And so Miss Butterworth pays the Knollys family a visit.

This novel is steeped in gothic elements. A phantom coach is sometimes seen rushing noiselessly down the lane. A mysteriously muttering old crone lives nearby. And the huge, decaying Knollys mansion has dozens of uninhabitable rooms crawling with beetles and spiders. Miss Butterworth encounters an uneasy welcome from the Knollys siblings, who behave quite strangely.

I love Miss Butterworth, and these two novels are a delight. I'd also recommend this edition over others. It's complete - and more readable than a digital reproduction.

5.0 out of 5 stars spp, February 4, 2010

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spp "spp" (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: That Affair Next Door and Lost Man's Lane (Hardcover)

Both are very good stories and some of the best by Anna Katharine Green. I enjoyed reading them!