Various plot devices like bodies in the library, locked room mysteries, expert witnesses and the legal aspects of detective story have their origin in Green's novels. The detective, Ebenezer Gryce, who featured in nearly a dozen of Green's later books is a portly, comfortable looking, unassuming, shy fellow whose brilliant talents are kept well hidden. Other innovations that Green is credited with are the wispy spinster, Amelia Butterworth, an early forerunner to Agatha Christie's little old maid, Miss Marple. She also created the “series detective” which is a device that has been explored by countless writers of mystery novels to this day.Īnother invention of hers was the “girl detective” as an amateur young woman who stumbles into mysteries and solves them by dint of brilliant, logical thinking and solid leg work. She was the first writer to develop the “whodunit” in its classic form. It was a runaway bestseller and Anna Katharine Green, its thirty-two year old author, is credited with many other firsts. However, connoisseurs of detective fiction would immediately recognize this genre reating work by an author who is now acknowledged as “the mother of detective fiction.” The book published in 1878 was the first ever American detective novel. Written nine years before the advent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, The Leavenworth Case is little known today. The finger of suspicion can point only to someone inside. The building, which had remained locked throughout the night, houses a number of servants besides the two young ladies. His will, written some time earlier, is discovered, in which he has left his entire fortune to one of the nieces, while cutting out the other completely. One morning, he is found mysteriously dead in his study, shot neatly through the back of his head. His two orphan nieces, Mary and Eleanor live with him in a luxurious mansion in New York's upscale Fifth Avenue. Horatio Leavenworth, an immensely wealthy bachelor, is a retired merchant who enjoys great social position and respect.

The leavenworth case