The House of the Whispering Pines

Caleb Sweetwater #3

by Anna Katharine Green

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Genres: Mystery, Classics, Fiction, Historical, Ebooks, Gothic, Mystery Thriller

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1910

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

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness! GREAT book! Fantastic storytelling and excellent writing! A little weird format-wise because this is a public domain book that was translated over to digital by volunteers, but not hard to adapt to. After reading this one I can honestly say our society as a whole has definitely de-evolved and don't let anyone tell you any differently! We used to have honor and a moral code that all but the most nefarious citizen abided by and some certainties were just that - certain! Our language skills have become indolent and lackadaisical, which may very well be the precursor to the disintegration of our other behaviour ethics! Read it, I guarantee you'll enjoy the drama! And keep the dictionary close!

"Duty is a stern task-master; and sterness, coming early into one's life, hardens its edges, but does not sap passion from the soul or devotion from the heart. I was ready for joy when it came, but I was no longer capable of bestowing it."

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a small introduction which indicates that while Green was enormously popular years earlier, her strength as an author was beginning to wane. Had I not read this, it would not have occurred to me while reading this. It's true, there were sections that seemed a bit repetitive.

The story is broken into 4 parts. The second part and a couple of chapters of the fourth part are told in the third person. The rest of the novel is told in the first person by Elwood Ranelagh. At first it seemed Green was intending to present a thriller, but it became clear before long that this was to be the type of detective fiction that was her strength. Her books were also strong in having a legal basis, and here she gives us some good courtroom scenes. Without giving any spoilers, we know that two people are lying, but we understand the reason. What about the third? And is Ranelagh an unreliable narrator? Green kept me reading!

This is not the edition I read. I have the Delphi Complete Works of Anna Katharine Green and accessed it there. There are a few - but very few - OCR errors, but they are not such as to interfere with the story or be subject to misinterpretation. My top rating for mystery works is 4-stars. This doesn't quite make it, but comes pretty darned close.

[Tweety · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent mystery!

When a woman is found dead at The Whispering Pines, not only is everyone shocked, but murder is suspected. After all, why would such a well liked young lady put an end to things, or why would anyone want to do away with her? Her vagabond of a brother is suspected, since he has every cause to wish her out of the picture. Her Fiancée also is suspected since he no longer wished to marry her but her sister.

With that the book sets of at a quickening trot only slowing down at about 30% then picking up again never to slow down again.

I really enjoy this, almost as much as The Forsaken Inn. We have suspense, a court case and the shocking lengths people go through to display love.

This book is told from the detective Sweetwater's viewpoint and sometimes the suspects' and it switches from First Person to Third Person.

One final thing, there are some great old/new words in here, I used my new kindle to look them up. :)

PG Some violence. Nothing graphic.

[Gwen Mayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The House of the Whispering Pines was originally published in 1910, which makes it a vintage mystery that should not be compared to today's novels. Anna Katharine Green is a product of her time, flowery language, 19th century values and sentiments bleed across the page.

That said, Green has many strong points. She does an excellent job job of portraying interrogations as they would have been done in the late 1800's. Her father was a famous trial lawyer and must have talked about cases with her. Green's inquest and trial scenes are well developed. Her courtroom scenes are outstanding. They are rich in drama and suspense. The play between the attorneys make the book worth reading.

Green is often credited with inventing the the detective series. At the very least she was one of the pioneers of the form. I believe her work influenced many other mystery writers.

I found The House of the Whispering Pines thoroughly enjoyable and am planning to read more of Green's work. To historical writer's like me, her books are a treasure, filled with remarkable characters, emotional turmoil, and language that should not be forgotten, though I hope my readers will smite me if I ever do more than add a dash of antiquated language to a book.

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice little cosy mystery story from "the mother of the detective novel".

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked The House of the Whispering Pines, it's a murder mystery kind of along the lines of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie mysteries. It starts out with a man named Elwood Ranelagh (sp?) driving in his carriage by the Whispering Pines a country club that has been closed up for the winter, when he notices smoke coming from the chimney and decides to see why the closed club would have a fire burning. When he enters he sees the object of his affection, Carmel Cumberland, the sister of his fiance` Adelaide Cumberland, quickly descending the stairs and rushing from the country club. Elwood goes upstairs and finds Adelaide covered in couch cushions and apparently strangled. The police show up and Elwood announces his presence and is immediately arrested and suspected of murder. While the story was interesting I felt that the investigation lingered on seemingly meaningless evidence and the story dragged a little on the tedious meandering Elwood's many boring thoughts, but the subsequent investigation and trial got the story moving along nicely and I found myself craving to know who the killer was.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love, envy, murder... an unusual murder occurs at a country clubhouse and the suspects include the victim's brother and her lover...
Though the plot is quite good, the reader should be cognizant of the first and third person changes throughout, the 'detective' Caleb Sweetwater is a rather unique character and one excellent at deduction...
The ending was definitely unexpected...

[Francene Carroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of this book pulled me right in and I couldn't put it down until I'd found out whodunit. I was so intrigued by this author, Anna Katharine Green, that I did some research and was shocked to discover she is considered the 'mother of detective fiction,' yet I'd never heard of her. What I loved about the novel were the gothic elements that were intertwined with the detective side of it, which is all about logic and evidence. There were several ways the story could have gone and I didn't guess who the murderer was till close to the end. On saying that, there weren't many clues laid down for the reader about this particular person, so it was a bit disappointing in this way. I like books where you're given a chance to work out the mystery because that's half the fun of reading mystery books. It's a real challenge for an author to lay down enough clues to give the reader a chance but at the same time distract them with red herrings.

The actual explanation for the murder was satisfying but the novel is a bit too drawn out for today's tastes. There is a great focus on the trial of one character where everything is rehashed in minute detail and I got a bit frustrated at this point. This is very much a Victorian novel, complete with Victorian melodrama and sentiment, which didn't bother me as I love Victorian fiction, but it is laid on quite thick.

I know Green was a major influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, but there was one scene were the detectives are all standing around in Carmel's bedroom waiting for her to regain consciousness where I was reminded of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which made me wonder if Stoker too had been influenced by Green. Although The House of the Whispering Pines has what I consider gothic elements the writing itself is not poetic like Stoker's and it would have benefited very much from some poetic techniques in my opinion. The detective side of it dominates the story, whereas I would have preferred more gothic mystery and less logic, but it was still a very good read. As I've downloaded all of this author's books from Amazon for free, I daresay this won't be the last book of Anna Katharine Green's that I review. 3.5 stars

[Sophiebird · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps an odd thing to say about a book, but: Too many words, way too many words; words that repeat and repeat with multiple characters' perspectives of the same situation; much too much flowery detail giving one the impression the author was more focused on how many words she could run together when 3 or 4 might do. Perhaps she was paid by the word.

In any case I found myself glazing over and skimming to the seemingly unattainable end, only to find in what actually started out as an intriqing mystery, that the perpetrator came completely out of nowhere; it was almost as if the author suddenly tired of writing and decided to quickly sum it up just to be done with it.

Reminded me of my daughter when about five years old, and finding herself not being able to continue any further with her story she had begun simply stated " . . . so she drank poison and died." The end.

[Amy Reade · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I really liked about this book was the way in which the legal elements were portrayed. In the trial there were terse questions and answers, appropriate objections, to-the-point opening and closing statements, and even a Perry Mason-esque trial surprise.

What I didn't like were the extreme overreactions of the narrator to learning about certain facts of the case. I'd mention them but I don't want to put out any spoilers. Part of those overreactions, I think, are due to the time period during which the book was written, but part of them are due to the narrator's personality.

I was surprised to learn that this is a series involving one particular detective, Caleb Sweetwater.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mystery meant to be read by men and women from a different era. I found it difficult to enjoy because of many of the characters' motives and melodrama. I tried to read it from the perspective of the early 20th century when it was published, but I could not get past Green's sexism. Women in her book are trembling, hesitating, fainting creatures. All of them.

Actually, I don't mind a story that is melodramatic and has characters with histrionic behavior, but there was something about this book that made it distasteful.

It was a free Kindle read.

[Karen Dillingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna Katharine Green is a fantastic writer and this book is very well written. It's a bit too wordy but the mystery is very good.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Free | Hard to get into, nobody comes out smelling like a rose | One of the other reviews talks about how this book demonstrates how much better people's morals were at the time and dear god let me never have to deal with people who have the "morals" of these characters. The first narrator is known in his area to be selfish and not to care much about the feelings of others, to the extent that the good feeling people had for his father does not carry to him. He was engaged to a woman he didn't love, barely liked, disapproved of the moral rectitude of, and didn't find attractive, and upon meeting her teenage sister, fell instantly in love with said teenager exclusively because she was so beautiful--he never really had a conversation with her, knew nothing of her character except that she was known to have a temper that made her smash things in childish rages. He decided to abandon his fiancee (at the time a very serious prospect for her) and convince the teenage sister to run away with him and elope, despite never having exchanged intimate words with her, coercing this orphaned teenager to leave her home, family, friends, and good name, to marry her sister's fiance. When he discovers his fiancee dead after the sister has run from the place in obvious horror, he decides that the sister must be the murderer and it takes him weeks, as well as the investigation of multiple police employees, to consider that maybe she found the dead body? Maybe there was another explanation? He apparently loved this child so much that he was willing to cover for her (he thinks several times that nobody as beautiful as she is could have intended the murder she must have done, so she shouldn't be convicted of this murder that, again, he's sure she committed), but not enough to think of a scenario in which she wasn't a killer. There's a brother who so disliked his sister trying to keep him to the upright path that he intentionally sought out every low act he could find, to spoil his reputation and luxuriate in immorality. The kid sister was prone to melodrama and self-harm, plotted secret disguised trips, but was somehow unable to snatch two glasses from the hand of the person she loved most in the world, if it meant saving a life? The victim is willing to either murder through a game of Russian roulette or permanently traumatize her baby sister and fiance through guilt, after years of torturing the kid sister by forcing her to constantly look at every toy she ever broke during childhood tantrums displayed in a case, and herself breaking family crystal to show her brother how much she disapproved of him. These are not good people and it was hard to care who the murderer was, if it wasn't a serial killer who would just wipe them all out.

[Tam May · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably Anna Katharine Green's most well-known work and upon reading it, it's easy to see why. It's the most complex of her works that I've read so far and involves a dysfunctional family which always makes for a great crime read.

I did find the ending a bit disappointing. I also found the narrator (Elwood) not to be very likable. I didn't quite buy that his love for Carmel was sincere and the fact that he essentially is responsible indirectly for the ruin of the family doesn't seem to bother him in the least. His selfish pursuit of Carmel even when she's willing to go to extreme lengths to rebuff him wasn't exactly admirable.

But overall this is a great mystery with a lot of surprises.

[Cronache di Betelgeuse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recensione pubblicata su Cronache di Betelgeuse

Un giallo dalle premesse molte interessanti: il narratore è il principale indiziato per un terribile delitto che sembra avvolto nel mistero. Innamorato di una donna, che non sembra ricambiarlo, si trova sulla scena del crimine senza capire subito quello che è accaduto. Peccato però che il vero colpevole sia già presentato dopo un paio di capitoli, con parole alquanto sospette che ti mettono subito in allarme.

I sentimenti e le riflessioni del protagonista occupano molto spazio, quasi mettendo in secondo piano le indagini. La mentalità dell’uomo è antiquata, stona con la nostra società moderna e rende buffi e strampalati alcuni suoi pensieri che invece dovrebbero essere profondi. Non si riesce a capire come possa credere che la donna che adora possa aver commesso un delitto così orrendo. Da un lato, infatti, la crede perfetta sotto ogni punto di vista, la considera la sua anima gemella, ma la ritiene molto fragile. Dall’altro invece ritiene che possa ammazzare una donna a sangue freddo, senza provare rimorso perché la sua fragilità le ha rimosso i ricordi della tragedia.

Solo l’intervento di un investigatore esterno riesce a sbrogliare l’intrigo. Nonostante gli indizi siano alla portata di tutti, nessuno riesce a capire il collegamento che hanno con il delitto. Il protagonista rischia una dura condanna per un omicidio che non ha commesso e la sua reticenza a parlare non fa che peggiorare la situazione. Grazie all’investigatore però ritroverà un minimo di combattività e amor proprio e si convincerà che deve fare tutto ciò che può per assicurare il vero colpevole alla giustizia.

La storia non presenta però veri momenti di suspense o pathos, ma con i lunghi monologhi interiori tende annoiare a morte. Si tende ad arrivare fino alla fine per vedere quanto impiegano i personaggi a capire chi è il vero assassino e quali saranno le loro reazioni.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a good book, but can't say it was a page-turner for me. It took me a few pages to get used to her writing style & at times felt like it was a little repetitive, but I will probably read more of her books in the future. By the way, I didn't read this book in just one day, but I had put the wrong book on my list by mistake & when I corrected the title, the dates got messed up. I started it a couple of weeks ago.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this free download to my Kindle. The "bad guy" was who I expected it to be, but it was not confirmed until the very end. (It was the only person who could/would have done it.) The nobility of the two male protagonists was admirable; the detective brought in from New York was clever. I always like the older novels for their flowery language that uses 10 words, for example, to say what we might say in just 3 words.

[Cass · Rating 3 out of 5]

A love triangle--two sisters love are in love with the same man and one of them ends up dead! Murdered or is it?
Written in 1910, the archaic language is a slower read for me, but I enjoyed the book. But there were not enough clues given to figure out or to even see how the detective-Caleb Sweetwater figured out who the real murder was. Rather an abrupt ending with no follow-up about what happened after.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the way the book opened, with the protagonist stumbling upon the body of his murdered fiancée shortly before the arrival of the police. My heart went out to him as he gradually realized just how serious the case against him was. I also enjoyed the segments starring Caleb Sweetwater, a detective who has appeared in some of the author's other books.

[Starry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1910, this is a good old-fashioned mystery from the Golden Era of the "country house" genre. If it hadn't been set in New York, I would have sworn it an English mystery. Perhaps the theme of alcohol as evil is the best hint of its American origin and time.

[Patty Marion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really a page turner, but it held my interest as a murder mystery and how the investigation might have been conducted in the 1800's. The author did manage to keep me guessing right up until the end, though.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

An early twentieth century murder mystery, this book is not great literature, but was reasonably entertaining. When the circumstances of the murder were revealed at the end, they seemed pretty improbable. Two stars because "it was okay."

[Nazim · Rating 2 out of 5]

not my type. the cold bloodiness is absent.
Adelaide is murdered by strangulation. A detective Sweetwater investigates the case. Mr Raneleagh and the sister of the victim are under suspicion. I'd say the mystery is tangled too much for a quick comprehension after a first-time reading.

[Carrie Campbell-jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book! It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time, I couldn't wait to find out who'd done it, and the ending surprised me. My only complaint is that the story was longer than necessary in my opinion.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good book. There were lots of suspects in a spooky country club that was supposed to be closed. I kept thinking there must be one more suspect and you find out at the last chapter. I would read more books by Anna Katherine Green. It was a bit long, especially the court room trial.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author can write a run on sentence like no other. Sometimes I had to stop and read a sentence in segments so I could decipher what she was trying to convey. But, the story was good and I was intrigued until the end. I would definitely recommend this book but don't try to read it quickly!

[Leah Price · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun mystery! Took time to adjust to the writing style, and it was longer than it needed to be, but liked it anyway.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

No gothic mystery is complete without a touch of the "brain fever" and this one won't disappoint. A little wordy at times, but worth reading.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a free Kindle read. Fast and fun, although I had it figured out half-way in.

[Sarahjane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a page turner, but it had its moments and definitely piqued my curiosity. I found Sweetwater intriguing, but didn't care much for the rest of the characters.