The Leavenworth Case
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“The Leavenworth Case” is a 1878 classic detective novel by American author Anna Katharine Green. Her first novel, the story is set in New York City and revolves around the murder of Horatio Leavenworth, a retired merchant who has been shot in his library. When investigator Ebenezer Gryce and lawyer Everett Raymond begin to look into the case, they discover that the perpetrator could not have exited the building after Leavenworth's death. The first book in Green's detective series featuring Mr. Gryce, “The Leavenworth Case” is a riveting page-turner brimming with intrigue not to be missed by fans of classic detective fiction. Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist and poet. Among the first writers of detective fiction in America, she is considered to be the “mother” of the genre for her legally-accurate and well-thought-out plots. Other notable works by this author include: “Initials Only” (1911), “One of my Sons” (1901), and “The Circular Study” (1900). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this vintage detective novel now in a brand new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in 1878, nine years before the debut of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, this atmospheric and suspenseful mystery well deserves a modern audience. When someone shoots Horatio Leavenworth, a wealthy retired merchant, through the head in his library late one night, the evidence at the inquest indicates that no one could have left the victim's locked Manhattan mansion before the discovery of the body the next morning. Suspicion thus falls on members of the household, specifically the dead man's nieces, Mary and Eleanore, only one of whom stands to benefit from their uncle's death. Everett Raymond, a junior partner in a New York law firm that had Leavenworth as a client, teams with unassuming official investigator Ebenezer Gryce to seek the truth. Green (1846 1935), whose smooth prose remains fresh, makes Gryce an interesting enough character to leave fans of traditional whodunits eager to see more of the detective in reissues of his further exploits.
