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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another excellent mystery from Green,
By
This review is from: That Affair Next Door (Girlebooks Classics) (Kindle Edition)
Returning from a trip abroad, the Van Burnam family enters their New York mansion to find a dead woman on the dining room floor. A curio cabinet has fallen on top of her, crushing her face, and law officers suspect that the victim is the wife of one of the Van Burnam sons. However, the son insists that he does not recognize the victim. How did this woman get into this locked house? Whose are those strange garments she is wearing? What is her hat doing in the closet and a strange, gaudy hat crushed underneath her? Why did the coroner insist that the woman was dead when the curio fell?
The story itself was another fascinating study in human motivations intertwined with bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence that at first make very little sense. True to Green's style, she calls up and explains each motivation, each piece of evidence with mathematical precision until the mystery unravels, and the perpetrator is punished in a most fitting fashion. In That Affair Next Door, Mr. Gryce owes much of his success to the main witness, a woman named Miss Amelia Butterworth, who lives next door to the crime scene. Having read about Green's life and political views at the University of Texas Tarlton Law Library's "Law in Popular Culture" site, I suspect that Miss Butterworth may have been Green's alter ego. The story itself is written in first person with Miss Butterworth narrating. The first thing that struck me regarding the protagonist, Miss Butterworth, was the remarkable contrast between her and the victimized main witness in The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow. Miss Butterworth, a fifty-ish spinster, is well able to take care of herself and has no qualms about helping Mr. Gryce and even conducting some investigation on her own. Any attempt to victimize or take advantage of this woman would have been discovered in a trice and rebuffed with a flourish. Notwithstanding Miss Butterworth's self-reliance, Green's prose offers a window into class and gender roles as they stood in the late nineteenth century. Her vivid descriptions of socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior picture clearly how much society has changed over the past century. One can only speculate regarding what attitudes the author intended to express. Looking into her own life, we see a woman who was successful professionally (she always earned more than her husband), but not inclined to support women's causes, such as suffrage. The fact that she was able to overcome any barriers to her professional success may have been part of her reason for finding women's causes unnecessary. As a woman who advised Conan Doyle in his early career and partnered with her husband in designing award-winning furniture she certainly served as the epitome of female success, well able to overcome any obstacles society may have established.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Miss Butterworth catches the "fever of investigation",
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: That Affair Next Door (Paperback)
This is one of Anna Katharine Green's most accomplished mysteries. It offers the reader a bizarre murder with the sly, seventy-seven-year-old Inspector Gryce on the case; an inquest rich in shocking revelations; more than one broken heart; and best of all, Miss Amelia Butterworth.
Miss Butterworth belongs to the inner circle of New York society in 1895. Over fifty and free of "the doubtful blessing of a husband," she is orderly, logical, unsentimental and a lady with impeccable taste. Her exclusive address at Gramercy Park puts her right next door to a shocking murder. As we might expect, Miss Butterworth enjoys looking out her windows. One night around midnight she sees a man and woman enter the Van Burnam mansion, which is supposed to be empty. The man leaves soon after, but the woman does not. On the following day, Miss Butterworth persuades a policeman to enter the quiet house to see if anything's amiss. They find the body of a woman crushed to death under a cabinet in the parlor. This is just the beginning of a complex investigation full of wrong turns and faulty conclusions. The clues are particularly delightful - a pincushion out of place, lost keys, lost rings, too many women's hats etc. Early on, Miss Butterworth feels that her worth has not been appreciated by the police. So she undertakes her own investigation - and has the time of her life doing it. Despite a few erroneous notions, Miss Butterworth emerges as a truly amazing detective - and wins Gryce's admiration. She's charmer, a crusty old maid with a well-concealed soft heart - and quite a slippery interrogator. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple was inspired by the delightful Miss Butterworth. Green was famous for her intricate plots, and That Affair Next Door is a first-rate example of her skill.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My First (but not last) Anna Katharine Green book,
By meme (Florida United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: That Affair Next Door (Kindle Edition)
This book was a lot of fun to read. The author's wrting style sucked me in right from the start. It was hard for me to believe it was written so long ago. I was kept guessing whodunnit until near the end. The main character Miss Araminta Butterworth who preferred to be called Amelia was a real character and had a pretty good opinion of herself and her detecting skills. The conclusions she drew were usually wrong but she succeeded in picking up on several clues that the police overlooked. Ultimately her investigation led to the unveiling of the guity person.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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old duster, plaid silk Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Van Burnam, Miss Althorpe, Miss Butterworth, Miss Oliver, New York, Gramercy Park, James Pope, John Randolph, Randolph Stone, Amelia Butterworth, Miss Ferguson, Miss Stapleton, Twenty-seventh Street, Four Corners, Duane Street, Police Headquarters, Third Avenue, Twenty-first Street, Ruth Oliver, Long Branch, Ninth Street, Olive Randolph Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
old duster, plaid silk Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Van Burnam, Miss Althorpe, Miss Butterworth, Miss Oliver, New York, Gramercy Park, James Pope, John Randolph, Randolph Stone, Amelia Butterworth, Miss Ferguson, Miss Stapleton, Twenty-seventh Street, Four Corners, Duane Street, Police Headquarters, Third Avenue, Twenty-first Street, Ruth Oliver, Long Branch, Ninth Street, Olive Randolph Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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