As one of the first writers of detective fiction in America, Anna Katharine Green has been called the "the mother of the detective novel." A bestselling author who would author almost forty novels, she is noted for introducing the first American series of detective novels. Her first novel, "The Leavenworth Case," which introduces us to her popular detective Ebenezer Gryce, is a classic whodunit concerning the murder of Horatio Leavenworth, a wealthy New York merchant and philanthropist. Drawing upon the conventions of her contemporary Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the reader is presented with the perplexing fact that the victim is discovered in his locked Manhattan mansion, a stylistic device employed in a number of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Suspicion quickly falls upon Horatio's niece Eleanore, who stands to benefit through inheritance by her Uncle's untimely demise as well as the other members of the household. Mystery lovers will delight in this first novel of a series in which they may not yet be familiar with.
