ANNA KATHERINE GREEN Ultimate Collection: Amelia Butterworth Series, Detective Ebenezer Gryce Mysteries, The Cases of Violet Strange, Caleb Sweetwater Trilogy & Other Mysteries: Whodunits of NYC

by Anna Katharine Green

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Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel". She is credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form, and developing the series detective. Her main character was detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force, but in three novels he is assisted by the nosy society spinster Amelia Butterworth, the prototype for Miss Marple, Miss Silver and other creations. She also invented the 'girl detective': in the character of Violet Strange, a debutante with a secret life as a sleuth. Indeed, as journalist Kathy Hickman writes, Green "stamped the mystery genre with the distinctive features that would influence writers from Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle to contemporary authors of suspenseful "whodunits".
Table of
Amelia Butterworth
That Affair Next Door
Lost Man's Lane
The Circular Study
Mystery
The Leavenworth Case
A Strange Disappearance
X Y A Detective Story
Hand and Ring
The Mill Mystery
The Forsaken Inn
Cynthia Wakeham's Money
Agatha Webb
One of My Sons
The Filigree Ball
The Millionaire Baby
The Chief Legatee'
The Woman in the Alcove
The Mayor's Wife
The House of the Whispering Pines
Three Thousand Dollars
Initials Only
Dark Hollow
The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow
Non Detective
The Sword of A Story of New York Life
Short
The Old Stone House and Other Stories
A Difficult Problem and Other Stories
Room Number 3 and Other Detective Stories
The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange

Genres: Mystery

7059 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2016

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

[William E. Ferreira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I enjoy

I'm not expressing a negative opinion of her writing just saying that I don't enjoy her style. It probably says more about me as she generally gets good reviews. I think that anyone who likes "Woman in White" would enjoy her stories.

[Vivienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ultimate in Story-telling

What a great collection of stories for so small a price! I opened the e-book and was confronted by “Time left in book 78 hours 52 minutes”. Daunting? A bit, but what terrific reading it is. Twenty-four full-length novels and four collections of short stories, although I may have miscounted. These novels and short stories are written and mainly set in the late 1800s and early 1900s and this shows in the writing. Anna Katherine Green wrote in the style of the times and consequently is verbose, sometimes sentimental, but with complex sentence-structure and impeccable grammar. Her books also encompass all the prejudices of the times, including those of race and class.

Obviously, I think some of the novels are better than others, but on the whole, I enjoyed them all. All are well-plotted and meticulously crafted, very often with unexpected twists in them, and although in some of them the solution or the ending is more discernible, none is entirely predictable. Green combines mystery, drama, (sometimes almost melodrama), and romance into a whole that is wonderful story-telling that keeps the reader captivated for many hours.

The prose is first-rate, the dialogue natural and authentic, and the characterisations are superbly done. The crime stories take up the majority of the book, with a different kind of novel, ‘The Sword of Damocles’ standing alone, and the book is rounded off with several short stories of differing lengths.

This collection has that elusive quality that takes stories from out of the ordinary, and lifts them into something that is very, very good. This quality is difficult to quantify and is probably personal to each reader, but for me, this collection of stories has that quality.