The Leavenworth Case
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3.9 • 14 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
This classic mystery by one of the first female authors of detective novels has influenced the writing of Agatha Christie and thrilled generations of avid readers
Everett Raymond is a junior partner in the firm of Veeley, Carr & Raymond, attorneys and counselors at law. When Mr. Horatio Leavenworth, a very old and wealthy client, is found murdered, Everett finds himself entangled in the case. Leavenworth has been inexplicably shot while sitting at his own library table at night, all the doors in the house locked and untampered with. Suicide is quickly ruled out. Was the killer someone inside the house? Suspects abound: Thomas, the butler; Harwell, the private secretary and amanuensis to Mr. Leavenworth; and Mary and Eleanore Leavenworth, the two lady nieces, one of whom has been left out of her uncle’s will. Everett dives in as right-hand man to the inscrutable police detective Ebenezer Gryce, a brilliant investigator on the New York Metropolitan Police Force.
From a vanished servant to a secret marriage, from a shadowy mustached man to a forged confession, this swiftly plotted Victorian-era mystery, full of twists and turns and devastating cliffhangers, will keep you guessing until the very last page. Influential in the development of the modern suspense novel and a huge bestseller when it was first published, The Leavenworth Case is a groundbreaking tale not to be missed.
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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.
