The Amelia Butterworth Mysteries

by Anna Katharine Green

THE AMELIA BUTTERWORTH MYSTERIES is a series of three novels featuring Miss Amelia Butterworth teamed up with Detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police. Miss Butterworth is a nosy high-society lady whose wealth and lack of family give her the free time solve several Victorian-era crimes.Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was a pioneering American author of detective fiction. Her legally accurate and intricately-plotted works served to inspire later generations of writers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, who patterned her 'Miss Marple' character after Green's spinster crimefighter Amelia Butterworth. Includes an active table of contents with back-linking for easy navigation.• That Affair Next Door• Lost Man’s Lane• The Circular Study

Genres: Mystery, History, Classics, Historical Mystery

889 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 3, 2011

About the author

Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Born in Brooklyn, New York, her early ambition was to write romantic verse, and she corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing about 40 books. She was in some ways a progressive woman for her time-succeeding in a genre dominated by male writers-but she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women's suffrage. Her other works include A Strange Disappearance (1880), The Affair Next Door (1897), The Circular Study (1902), The Filigree Ball (1903), The Millionaire Baby (1905), The House in the Mist (1905), The Woman in the Alcove (1906), The House of the Whispering Pines (1910), Initials Only (1912), and The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917).

Reviews

[Carolyn Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting proper Victorian spinster lady detective who doesn't want to detect, but can't help herself. Her interaction with the lead detective, an 80-something man who wants to retire, but doesn't want to retire, is different than I've ever encountered before in a detective novel. It takes place in the US instead of England, a welcome difference, too. A little tedious in places, but well worth the effort to stick with it.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this set of 3 mysteries written around the 1890's. I rated as very good 4.5. Ok, it is a bit slow and old fashioned but the mysteries were fascinating. I liked Mrs. Butterworth; reportedly, Agatha Christie modeled Miss Marple after her. Quote: " Whatever thought I have
which in any way differed from those generally expressed, I keep to myself, whether guided by discretion or pride, I cannot say, probably by both, for I am not deficient in either quality."

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prolix as I expected, but not so bad that they're unreadable.
That Affair Next Door featured an unlikely scenario, but a great detectival path to solution featuring Miss Butterworth's knowledge of women, their clothing & behaviors appropriate to their classes, to the confusion and befuddlement of all the police, save an elderly detective, Mr. Gryce, the star of the force. Amelia does intellectual battle with him as much as with the criminals, but the puzzling affair of the wrong victim and the wrong criminal and the wrong bride works out finally.
The second book, Lost Man's Lane, is more of a thriller/ horror story and not so good.
I've skimmed the last, The Circular study, and have hopes for it, but I'll have to update this review further when I finish that.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't quite put a finger on why I disliked this book so heartily. The Amelia (or Araminta) character is quirky and independent the way you want your sleuth to be, but she lacks other likable characteristics. She has no kindness. She's mean--or maybe it's that she shows no sense of humor about her own shortcomings? She makes me long for a Dagliesh, who I always felt was not only leading me through a good mystery but somehow showing me ways to be a better person too. Or Poirot, who, despite his arrogance, had a certain, cute, sheepish irony about him at times. That's demanding a lot from a detective novel, I guess. Anyway, I found myself cringing at things Amelia said to or thought about others all the time. I also thought there were a surprising number of places in this narrative where characters said or did things that were so ludicrous I just didn't know what to think. I get that it's fiction. But it's detective fiction. Somehow, or so it seems to me, the uncertainty of crime and criminal in the form puts a demand on the author to provide certainty in other ways: a stable frame of reference, for instance, usually provided for in part by the fact that the minor characters and events follow fairly rational patterns of behavior and speech. They don't continually, like 5 times per chapter, do and say completely outlandish things to make some plot development possible--unless the whole point of the text is to undermine generic expectations. But I don't think Green was after anything so ambitious. I guess I'm just trying to say that there is a limit to how much suspension of disbelief I am capable of. The first novella in this collection strained against that limit way too often. I probably won't read the others.

To be more positive: I DID finish the story--because I genuinely wanted to see how Green would untangle what seemed to be a bit of a mess. And, I guess one could argue that there is no reason why a sleuth HAS to be nice. Maybe there is something liberatory about a female sleuth of the nineteenth (?) early twentieth (?) century who refuses to comply with the social mandate that single, older women be all seemingly soft and sweet like Miss Marple. I'm not sure.

[Rinki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very nice book