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你可能喜欢Anna Katherine Green - by Michael E. Grost
Recommended Works:
Anna Katherine Green
The Leavenworth Case (1878) (Book 2) (available on-line at
That Affair Next Door (1897) (Chapters 1-9, 16-20, 24, 41-42) (available on-line at
Lost Man's Lane (1898) (Chapters 1-3, 39) (available on-line at
The Circular Study (1900) (Chapters 1-10) (available on-line at
Uncollected short stories
The Mystery of the Blue Wash (1889)
The Doctor, His Wife, And the Clock (1895) (available on-line at
Room No. 3 / Masterpieces of Mystery (collected 1913) (available on-line at
Room No. 3 (1909)
Midnight in Beauchamp Row
The Little Steel Coils / A Difficult Problem (1896)
The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange (collected 1915) (available on-line at
An Intangible Clue
The Grotto Spectre (1913)
Missing: Page Thirteen
Violet's Own
Hume Nisbet
The Haunted Station (collected 1894)
The Haunted Station
Robert W. Chambers
The Mystery of Choice (collected 1897) (available on-line at
The Purple Emperor
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
"The Long Arm" (1895) (available on-line at
Pauline E. Hopkins
"Talma Gordon" (1900)
Elmer Rice
On Trial (1914) (available on-line at
Donald Bayne Hobart
The Cell Murder Mystery (1931) (Chapters 1 - 14; 23-24)
Melville Davisson Post
The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (1896) (available on-line at
The Men of the Jimmy
Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries (collected 1918) (available on-line at
The House of the Dead Man (1911)
The Riddle (1912)
The Treasure Hunter (1915)
Naboth's Vineyard (1916)
The Straw Man (1917?)
The Edge of the Shadow (1918)
Monsieur Jonquelle
The Great Cipher (1921)
The Silent Witness (collected 1930)
The Survivor (1926)
The Witness in the Metal Box (1929)
William Faulkner
Knight's Gambit
An Error in Chemistry (1946; written 1940)
"A Rose For Emily" (1930)
Mrs. Wilson Woodrow and C.C. Waddell
Heywood Atchison stories
Atchison Always Wins! (1930)
Jerome Beatty
"The Twenty-Fourth Hour" (1930)
Jacqueline Cutlip
"The Black Cloud" (1959)
Anna Katherine Green
Anna Katherine Green was an American mystery novelist, whose career
stretched from 1878 all the way to 1923. Her first book, The
Leavenworth Case (1878), was the first American best selling
novel, selling a quarter of a million copies, and earning Green
the title of "The Mother of the Detective Novel". It
starred her series detective, Ebenezer Gryce, a low key, middle
aged New York police officer. Gryce also had a large number of
assistants, such as Sweetwater, and friends, many of whom got
books of their own.
The typical Green case opens with the discovery
of a murder scene. The murder was the result of a nighttime meeting
incredible passions usually raged at this meeting,
involving jealousy, blackmail, parent-child conflicts or revenge,
and these passions got out of hand, and led to murder. The detectives
usually do a lot of well done sleuthing at this point, uncovering
hidden facts about the case, various people involved, the earlier
lives of the suspects and so on. This detective work is the best
part of the novel. Just when readers are completely fascinated
by all this sleuthing, the detective story grinds to a sudden
halt, and we are treated instead to a long, long flashback dealing
with the early lives of the characters. The flashback is a regular
novel, not a mystery, and is filled with Victorian melodrama.
Green inherited this flashback technique from ,
and one finds similar Gaboriau inspired flashbacks in such
A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of Four (1890),
and The Valley of Fear (1914), where they also
annoy modern readers! Green's flashbacks are even more sinister
and horror filled than those of Gaboriau, or Doyle.
Green's novels also suffer in modern eyes by their general lack of puzzle plots,
although there are some good puzzles in her shorter fiction. Despite
these flaws, the best passages of detective work in Green's books
remain first rate. It is a major contribution to the technique
of the detective story, and has influenced numerous Twentieth
Century detective writers.
Detection in Green
During the period 1849 - 1885, many mystery stories emphasized
detection. The characters of detectives, and the process of watching
them solve mysteries, were themselves inherently fascinating to
19th century readers. Starting with the
founder Waters, and extending through to Dickens, Gaboriau, and
Green, with stops along the way for Waters imitators like Andrew
Forrester, Jr., and the Australians James Skipp Borlase and Mary
Fortune, the process of detection itself was the key element of
the tales.
By contrast, mystery puzzles, defined as plots with imaginative,
surprising solutions, were not as emphasized. There were such
stories, especially in the American Renaissance of ,
Melville's "Benito Cereno" (1855) falls into the start of this era,
and Richard Dowling's "The Going Out of Alessandro Pozzone" (1876) attempts ingenuity.
tales also are well plotted, as is Gaboriau's Le Crime d'Orcival.
But it is not till
that a systematic
attempt is made at mystery puzzle plot brilliance.
Stories emphasizing detective work are a little closer to mainstream
fiction than are puzzle stories. Detective tales can be considered
in some ways as realistic stories about detectives, just as other
Victorian fiction focused on realistic portraits of governesses
or clergymen. Detective tales eventually developed story conventions
different from conventional books - after all, detectives unravel
hidden events, so they tell stories "backwards" from
a conventional novel. And detective fiction has many special exciting
events and melodramatic conventions. But still, it is more realistic
and less "genre"-like than a puzzle tale, where pure
ingenuity of plot is the reader's chief interest.
The best part of Green's The Leavenworth Case (1878) is
the detection in Book 2. Each section brings to new light some
facts about the mysterious Henry Clavering. Much of the detection
is ingenious. Green draws clear lines between detection by amateurs
and the police, and shows the strengths of each with remarkable
vividness, imaginativeness, and clarity. Here the police and amateurs
work together, each contributing numerous pieces to the puzzle.
In later Green novels (), Gryce will work with another
amateur, the archetypal spinster sleuth, Miss Amelia Butterworth,
in a relation that includes both the cooperation typical of The
Leavenworth Case, and some competition.
Later, too,
The Mystery
of a Hansom Cab (1886) will feature competition between two
detectives for the solution of a case. Douglas G. Greene suggests
that this influenced similar competitions in
The World's Finger (1901). I might add the friendly but
exuberant competition between the private eye Mr. Barnes and the
amateur Mr. Mitchell in Rodrigues Ottolengui's five mystery books
of the 1890's, and the more serious (though not necessarily more
ingenious) battles of wits between detectives in
Big Bow Mystery (1891) and Leroux's Mystery of the Yellow Room
(1907). Such detectival competitions seem to be a common feature of
mystery novels of the era.
Green shows plenty of gusto, too, in Book 2 of The Leavenworth
Case, with a kind of plotting later standard in the mystery
novel, but probably innovative in its day: the gradual unveiling
of a buried situation, piece by piece. This is all very well done,
and is virtually paradigmatic for later mystery writers. It is
unclear whether Green created this kind of unveiling, but it is
done awfully well by her, and probably influenced later authors.
Much of the rest of the book is not up to this standard. The detective
known as Q has a good moment near the start of Book 3, and Gryce's
successful attempt to smoke out the killer by his announcement
in the attic at the novel's end is well done, too. But these are
isolated beauties of detection in a none-too-brilliant Books 3
and 4. The detection comes to a screeching halt fairly early in
Book 3, when a second murder occurs. This second murder is paradigmatic
in mystery plots, too, and pops up in a million Golden Age detective
novels. But it interrupts what Green does best in this book, which
is pure detective work.
The Influence of Detection in Green on Later Writers
Why Didn't They
Ask Evans (1933) reveals her debt to Anna Katherine Green.
Christie records in her autobiography that Green's works helped
inspire her to become a mystery writer. The influence of Green
is especially apparent in this novel. Green excelled at detection,
the gradually uncovering of hidden facts about a crime, by both
amateur and professional detectives. Such an uncovering is at
the heart of Evans. The logic with which Christie constructs
her plot recalls a similar logic that Green brought to her books.
The whole book has a very Green feel.
Agatha Christie's development and gradual unveiling of hidden
facts in her books is one of her most appealing and exciting traits.
The reader is always learning about events in the past which might
be hidden crimes, or which could provide motives for the crime
currently under investigation. It is always a thrilling experience
for the reader to see such new perspectives emerge. It is an intellectual
Agatha Christie's relationship to Green is paralleled in many
ways by that of American mystery novelist
to Green. Rinehart records a similar personal inspiration to publish
her first mysteries from Green's books. In Rinehart's work, there
is a similar emphasis on uncovering a mystery, as well. In a story
like "The Burned Chair", there are plenty of mysterious
events. Each turn of the plot either brings new mystery, or helps
uncover previous mysteries. The relentless, logically inspired
focus on the mystery, seems in an ancestral line from Green.
Both Rinehart's and Christie's spinster sleuths, Miss Rachel Innes
and Miss Jane Marple, seem directly inspired by Green's Miss Amelia
Butterworth.
The second Butterworth novel, Lost Man's Lane (1898), seems
especially influential on Rinehart. The way that all the suspects
in Green's Lost Man's Lane live on a single, isolated street,
anticipates Rinehart's The Album (1933); both books concentrate
on five households. And the spooky goings on in the main country
mansion in Green's book anticipate Rinehart's The Circular
Staircase. There is also a spiral staircase, deep within the
mansion in Green's book. The hidden family secrets, long in the
past, will find echoes in many of Rinehart's plots. The serial
killer aspects of Lost Man's Lane return in Rinehart's
The After House (1914). The way amateur-detective-working-with-the-police
Butterworth gets an assignment from Gryce in the opening, and
her comic sparring with Gryce over it, anticipates Rinehart's
nurse detective Miss Pinkerton.
It has been fashionable to date the modern mystery novel from
Trent's Last Case
(1913). Bentley's book is certainly a good novel. But long
before Bentley, or his contemporary ,
Anna Katherine Green was a major influence on detective fiction.
Nowhere as good as a constructor of puzzles as later writers,
such as Bentley, Freeman or Christie, she did excel at detection.
And she helped serve as a model for the detective work of modern
The Amelia Butterworth novels
That Affair Next Door (1897) is the debut of Amelia Butterworth,
mystery fiction's original spinster sleuth. The book is at its
best in those chapters (1-9, 16-20, 24) in which Butterworth is
actually detecting. This is partly because Green's skills center
on the detection parts of her books. And partly because Butterworth
is such a fascinating creation. She is richly characterized in
those chapters that display her in full detective mode. The detection
here is more a Gaboriau-like investigation of a crime scene, and
less the gradual look into characters' past history that is often
found in Green.
That Affair Next Door mercifully lacks the long non-detective
flashback that takes up a major portion of other Green novels.
But it does intersperse several sections, such as the long inquest,
that mainly tell some of the suspects' history in a linear, non-detective
way. These less than gripping passages are largely equivalent
to the boring flashbacks of other Green novels.
The two brothers in That Affair Next Door recall the two
sisters in The Leavenworth Case. The complex trails left
by the characters anticipate The Chief Legatee (1906).
The depiction of the house where the murder occurs also anticipates
the Violet Strange story, "An Intangible Clue". The
solution of That Affair Next Door shows some affinity to
that of "The Doctor, His Wife, And the Clock" (1895).
It does have ingenuity, in tying up the disparate strands of the
Lost Man's Lane (1898) has a nice opening (Chapters 1-3),
with Butterworth once again sparring with Gryce, while an intriguing
mystery is set forth, complete with map of a spooky country village.
These sections combine comedy with a pleasantly creepy atmosphere.
If some of the Violet Strange tales involve disappearing objects,
this novel centers on vanishing people. Unfortunately, the rest
of the book does not do much to develop this material further,
until the solution (Chapter 39). And in much of the story, Butterworth
seems more like a passive eye-witness to events, rather than a
detective. This book does have some interest, as one of the earliest
of all serial killer mystery novels.
The Circular Study (1900) shows a similar dichotomy to
The Leavenworth Case, between outstanding detection, and
less enjoyable material. The first half of the book (Chapters
1-10) is a straightforward investigation of a crime, with excellent
detective work. There is a great deal of pleasant humor and entertaining
storytelling as well, in this first half of the novel. At this
point we start learning about the suspects' history, and we are
in another world, Green's unique universe of nightmarish suffering
and horror, where her characters have to endure the most terrible
events imaginable. This flashback look at the suspects' tragic
lives takes up most of the second half of the book.
Multimedia
The multimedia aspects of The Leavenworth Case have often
been remarked on, with not just one, but two, floor maps, and
the reproductions of handwritten letters as clues. Perhaps equally
notable is the timeline, a text-only device that is all the same
a radical departure from conventional narrative methods. Was Green
the first to employ this?
Green's novel is a notable early example of multi-media, over
40 years before Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus.
used the floor plan in Monsieur Lecoq. There are also floor
plans and other multimedia features in the otherwise dreary Notting
Hill Mystery (1862) by .
Other Green novels continue her innovations in multimedia. The
Circular Study (1900) contains a chapter printed in two columns.
One column shows letters. A second column contrasts the contents
of those (lying) letters with the private diary of one of the
characters.
The Circular Study contains another now-standard mystery feature
partaking of multimedia: a list of questions that need to be answered
for the mystery to be solved. Embedding lists in novels is still
not a common feature of mainstream novels, even though it is a
vital part of much subsequent mystery fiction. One can find it
in such on-the-record Green admirers as Rinehart, Christie and
Van Dine. Green adds a final multimedia flourish near the end
of the mystery, one that was not influential on subsequent
writers. She repeats the list, and in the margin she writes "answered"
or "not answered" in handwritten script next to each
question, depending on whether the detective has yet succeeded
in answering the question. Green is clearly feeling exuberant,
and doing "wheelies" with the possibilities of multimedia.
Publisher's Blurbs
The blurbs in the back of Green's The House of the Whispering
Pines (1910) are fascinating. They are for a dozen of her
novels, still in print after many years in 1910, and are brief
quotes from contemporary reviewers, taken from journals that no
longer exist, and of which I have largely never heard. Almost
uniformly, the reviewers' quotes stress Green's superb plot construction.
The word "ingenuity" occurs again and again. Well constructed,
ingenious plots must be what both reviewers and readers of the
era wanted. Similarly, Doyle expressed his admiration for Gaboriau's
"dovetailed" plotting, which seemed to him to be a chief
attraction of her work. These attitudes are taken to dominate
the 1920's-1930's Golden Age, but clearly they were prevalent
much earlier.
Short Stories and Literary Techniques
The short comic piece "The Mystery of the Blue Wash"
(1889) seems in some ways to be a dry run for ideas later used
more seriously and elaborately in "The Doctor, His Wife,
And the Clock" (1895). There is a lot more pure puzzle plot
technique in Green's short stories than there is in her novels,
at least the ones I have read so far. There are also some similarities
in the kinds of puzzle plots Green investigates. "A Difficult
Problem" (1896) involves a mysterious appearance of a newspaper
clipping, while two of the Violet Strange stories, "The Second
Bullet" and "Missing: Page Thirteen", involve the
disappearance of objects. All five of these tales have broadly
similar kinds of solutions as well, frightening yet plausible.
These solutions bear some resemblance in technique to some of
those of .
"Missing: Page Thirteen" shows Green's interest in architecture.
Like The Circular Study (1900), and "The Staircase
at the Heart's Delight" (1894), it takes place in a complex,
unusual building. This fascination with architecture is directly
ancestral to the similar interest in
and other Golden Age writers.
"Missing: Page Thirteen" is also constructed like one
of Green's novels. It has both a modern day plot, followed by
a long Gaboriau-like flashback, filled with horror, explaining
the origin of events and situations in the modern story. While
these flashbacks can seem overblown in Green's novels, here however
it works wonderfully. The whole piece is one of Green's best works.
Green's "The Second Bullet" shows a technique in which
one mystery is explained, leading to revelations of the inner
situation of a mystery, followed by stripping away a second layer
of revelations, and so on. It is a "box within a box"
approach. "The Second Bullet" is neatly constructed
out of a whole series of such layers. This short story technique
is related in miniature to the detective emphasis of her novels,
in which detective work penetrates deeper and deeper into a mysterious
"An Intangible Clue". This tale shows in pure form one
aspect of many Green novels: a scene of the crime, and the detective's
reconstruction of the events that took place there. The crime
is sinister, takes place at a lonely house and is full of strange
coincidences: three Green traits. The detective heroine's visit
to the crime scene, disguised as the gawking of a tourist, reminds
one to a degree of the crime scene in Agatha Webb (1899),
and the people it attracts. The newspaper account in the story
mentions a floor plan, although it is not shown in the Green's
tale. Perhaps such floor plans were once common in real life newspaper
accounts of crime, just as in detective stories.
Green's stories are remarkably varied. They do not all fit within
one paradigm of crime fiction. Some are detective novels. Others
are suspense stories of crime. Most of the tales in The Old
Stone House (collected 1891) fall in this category, including
the long title novella. This novella seems remarkably similar
to the "suspense" stories written from the 1940's on.
It has no mystery, and focuses on an account of psychologically
abnormal characters whose lives are careening towards murderous
tragedy. This is exactly the paradigm of modern "psychological
suspense" tales. Many of Green's novels also have sections
similar to the modern story of suspense. I'm referring to the
Gaboriau like mainstream accounts of the event leading up to the
crime, that are found at the end of many Green books. I confess
I do not like most of Green's suspense tales, just as I do not
enjoy most modern instances of this genre.
Dates of the Action in Green
Another feature is the dating of the action, itself. Many early
mysteries have their action clearly, explicitly dated: ,
, Anna Katherine Green, ,
(The Eye of Osiris),
(The Cask).
One knows the year and the day in which the action occurs. I find
this fascinating. It intrigues me as a reader. It also makes me
want answers to literary-historical questions: What is the origin
and significance of this technique? Does it root in Victorian
realism? Is it unique to the detective novel? If so, was Waters
its creator? I don't know its origin, but its principal effect
is to add to the multimedia nature of the many mystery novels
that employ it. The dates form a different medium for novelistic
creation than linear, prose storytelling, adding another dimension
to the novels' structures.
Green's work is in fact carefully dated. The action of The
Leavenworth Case takes place in March 1876, over two years
before official book publication in 1878. Was this due to delays
in getting published? This would not be surprising for a first
novel. Was there a magazine publication c1877? I don't know. Later,
in the long short story "The Doctor, His Wife and The Clock",
published separately as a book in 1895, a contemporary Gryce is
narrating a story from his youth, set in 1851. Gryce says that
he was 30 then, so he was born c1820 - 1821. In the novel The
Circular Study (1900), Gryce describes himself as an "octogenarian".
This means that he is at least 80, so his latest possible birthdate
must be 1820. Hence we can conclude that Gryce was born in 1820.
It is possible that Green has an actual birthdate in mind for
Gryce, which is mentioned in some story I haven't yet read. In
any case, this birthdate would make him c55 during The Leavenworth
Case, which agrees with evidence in the story.
Also, in That Affair Next Door (1897), which is set in
September 1895, the narrator Amelia Butterworth estimates that
Gryce "was seventy-five if he was a day". This too is
consistent with a birth date of 1820. But later in the story,
Gryce's age is given as 78. This suggests a birth date of 1816
or 1817. This is unfortunately not consistent with "The Doctor,
His Wife and The Clock".
One might also note that in "The Doctor", Gryce says
that he is "now" 70, which makes the present in that
tale to be c1890. Once again, this leads one to suspect that "The
Doctor" had a prior magazine publication c1890. At least
in these stories, Gryce seems to be aging in "real time".
Why did Green set "The Doctor" in 1851? Green was born
in 1846, and would have been around 5 then. Her family lived in
New York City till she was 10. So Green has set this tale in the
time and place of her childhood. Does it draw on childhood memories?
It is such a terrifying work. The opening scene especially, is
one of the most hallucinatory in all mystery fiction. Its atmosphere
and strange sense of dream like brooding are unique.
"A Difficult Problem" (1896) seems to be another Gryce-narrated
short story, (although the identity of the tale's detective-narrator
is never made explicit), but it makes no attempt at the precise
dating used by Green elsewhere. It is a good tale. It, and the
much poorer Gryce-narrated "The Staircase at the Heart's
Delight" (1894) in the same volume, show an interest in murderous
devices. So do many Green novels. Such devices probably influenced
in The Mystery of
the Boule Cabinet. "Staircase" is set in 1840, so
Gryce was already on the force at around age 20. In The Circular
Study (1900), Green says Gryce has completed sixty years of
service. If he is 80 in that novel, that would mean that he started
on the detective force c1840, around age 20. This would make "Staircase"
set at the time when Gryce joined the force. However, Gryce makes
no mention of being a rookie or brand new officer in that tale
- he is simply described as "young".
Gay Relationships in Green
Her female characters form close attachments, and are impressed
by each other's beauty. Her male characters similarly evaluate
and note each other's looks. The scenes in Leavenworth
where Mr. Raymond tries, for detectival purposes, to make friends
with Henry Clavering have the feel of an attempted romantic liaison.
It is hard to tell if this effect is deliberate, or an unintended
side effect of Green, as a woman, writing from the point of view
of male and female characters. When Mr. Gryce, as narrator, starts
rhapsodizing about the other male characters' looks in "The
Doctor", is he just speaking for the author, who is female,
and who (perhaps) noticed such things? Or is he in his own character?
Or does Green just trying to create as much romantic feeling as
possible, by emphasizing the good looks of all her characters?
This could simply be a Nineteenth Century romance convention.
Still, interpreted literally, Green's tales have a gay feel. It
adds to their unusual point of view, especially when compared
to today's fiction.
Amelia Butterworth, in her debut case That Affair Next Door
(1897), describes herself as being influenced by a woman's beauty,
in the same way that men respond to it. She ascribes this to "something
masculine in my nature" (Chapter 24). Butterworth is the
original, prototypical spinster sleuth in detective fiction. It
is startling to see her described as being sexually attracted
to women, and in such explicit terms. Butterworth's masculine
gender personality, and her gay romantic feelings, are an integral
part of the characterization of spinster sleuth. The book's finale
(Chapter 42) also deals with this side of Butterworth.
Sweetwater in Agatha Webb (1899), his origin novel, is
deeply in love with an older man. Sweetwater will show up in later
Green novels as a continuing detective character. More male-male
relationships pop up in The Circular Study. Gryce talks
of "adopting" the young, male, police detective, Sweetwater,
"into his heart and home". He admires Sweetwater's detectival
abilities, even though his looks are ordinary and plain. Later,
both Gryce and Sweetwater discuss the supreme good looks of another
male character in the book. In another male-male relation in The
Circular Study, the murder victim's manservant has a deep
attachment to the victim, and was "jealous" of the victim's
falling in love with the heroine. Much is made of this jealousy
as a plot element, but the idea that a man can be in love with
another man, and jealous of his other relations, is simply accepted
as a matter of course. Green seems to be in another world from
Twentieth Century detective novelists, one in which same-sex relations
are accepted much more casually than later.
Same sex relations in Green seem to involve two groups of people.
One is the detective heroes themselves. Miss Amelia Butterworth,
Green's prototypical spinster sleuth, is a lesbian. Mr. Gryce's
adoption of Sweetwater, Mr. Raymond's pursuit of the handsome
Henry Clavering are key examples. One might also add here Q's
disguise as a woman in The Leavenworth Case.
The second group of people in same sex relations are servants
and other lower class people who fall in love with their masters.
The country woman who is so devoted to Mary Leavenworth, and Joseph's
devotion to his master in The Circular Study, are examples
of this. It is possible that this relationship was more acceptable
to Green's readers, because they liked the idea that the lower
classes were slavishly devoted to the upper. Perhaps the same
sex aspect of these relationships were simply invisible to Green's
19th Century readers, who saw only the political, class relationship
aspect. Be that as it may, it certainly seems very striking today.
Several Green works are political. They paint terrifying portraits
of radical political movements, and the totalitarian control they
exert over ordinary people, especially women. This includes her
anti-Communist book, The Chief Legatee (1906), and her
anti-KKK story, "The Black Cross". Green comes out of
a long tradition of 19th Century writers who feared the rise of
totalitarianism, including Percy Shelley, ,
and Joseph Conrad.
Her ideas also remind one of all the radical movements that served
as villains in
Both writers wrote anti-KKK tales.
Many modern academic critics seem to be Marxists - people whose
politics are the direct opposite of Green's. These writers tend
to see society as evil, and individual people as good. Green's
point of view seems to be the opposite. Green regards the family
as a frequently totalitarian institution, especially in its control
of women by male relatives. By contrast, Green tends to like society,
or at least, the existing capitalist society of her time. People
are happy in Green when they escape from their families, and take
part in the big, and relatively good, world. Equally evil in Green
are radical political movements, which tend to control people,
especially women, in similar totalitarian ways as the family.
Apparently non-political tales such as "The Doctor, His Wife,
And the Clock" perhaps have a political side. That novella's
unforgettable opening involves an invasion of the heroine's house,
and its taking over by sinister, all controlling forces. So do
"Midnight in Beauchamp Row" and "The Mystery of
the Blue Wash". None of these forces are political, but they
are similar in their totalitarian all-controlling way to the political
forces that take over the lives of the heroines in The Chief
Legatee and "The Black Cross". The heroine of the
later story has her home taken over by the KKK in just the same
way as the protagonists of "The Doctor" and other non-political
tales do. The sinister hotel in "Room No. 3" (1909)
also takes over its occupants' lives, in a somewhat similar way.
Crime stories of all eras are full of kidnapped heroines. How
do Green's tales, in which not just the heroine's person, but
also her home is taken over, differ from these? The home occupation
tales imply that the heroine's whole life has been taken over.
These tales are metaphors for the control over a person's life
that comes from both the family and from radical political institutions.
Violet Strange
Green's detective Violet Strange fits into these political concerns.
Violet Strange is a debutante, a young woman from a well to do
New York City family. She is also sneaking around, working in
secret as a professional detective for a private detective agency,
something that is almost unheard of for someone in her social
class. This work is kept secret from both her family and her Society
friends. Violet Strange is doing this because she needs to raise
money, for a project whose nature is only gradually revealed in
the stories. She is typical of Green heroines who defy their families,
and secretly promote schemes that give them an independent existence.
Violet Strange is less violent and less sinister seeming than
some of the woman suspects in Green's mysteries who are leading
secret lives. But she is just as much a rebel against her family
as any of them, just as determined and personally gutsy, and just
as sneaky and secretive. We eventually learn that Violet Strange
is defying her father, and his dictatorial control over his family.
This too is typical of Green, in whom male control over family
is the root of immense social and personal suffering and evil.
Although Green lived at a time when there was an active feminist
movement, she does not seem to gave supported active feminist
politics and reforms. We know from Patricia D. Maida's study that,
unlike the later Mary Roberts Rinehart, who marched with the Suffragettes,
that Green opposed giving women the right to vote. By contrast,
Green's fiction often dramatizes the problems facing women in
her time. Her characters are often coping with nightmarish situations
caused by male control over their lives. Green's women do not
seek political solutions to their problems. Instead, they ferociously
rebel in their personal lives, usually by launching some secret,
conspiratorial scheme involving a secret life and activities.
This rebellion is often a mainspring of Green's mystery plots.
Many of Green's women also struggle to succeed in professions,
and in businesses which they run. Such business opportunities
are usually presented by Green as happy, even joyous experiences
for the women. Violet Strange's pleasant relationship with her
male employer at the detective agency is typical of this. He values
her work highly, and is always eager to talk her into taking on
some case. They have pleasant banter and a friendly relationship.
There is a political dimension to this: in Green, when women escape
from their families, and take part in capitalist society and the
world of employment, their lives become fulfilling and pleasant.
Violet Strange is one of a long series of Victorian and Edwardian
female detectives who sprang up after the popularity of Sherlock
Holmes. Like Holmes, these women work as professional detectives,
taking on cases for clients. Like Holmes, these women have extraordinary
intellects, solving their cases through a mix of genius level
mental capacity, and professional detective skills. Violet Strange
reminds one of such earlier woman professional detectives, such
Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (1893), and
Dorcas Dene, Detective
(collected in book form 1897). One suspects that Green had read
some of these authors. Violet Strange goes undercover as a nurse
in a private house in one tale, just like Dorcas Dene did in one
of her adventures.
Recommended Reading
Patricia D. Maida's Mother of Detective Fiction: The Life and
Works of Anna Katherine Green (1989) is an in depth look at
Green's fiction. It also has information on Green's personal life.
Most interesting tidbit: An 1894 fan letter from
to Green survives, proposing that they get together when Doyle's
lecture tour brings him to Green's home town of Buffalo, New York.
One hopes this meeting actually took place.
Hume Nisbet
The Haunted Station: a short story
Hume Nisbet's "The Haunted Station" is a supernatural
tale, not a detective story strictly speaking, although it certainly
contains elements of crime. It is just too good to leave off my
list. Between its Australian setting and authorship, and its fantastic
elements, it serves as a reminder that not everything good happening
in detective fiction falls into a single, narrow channel.
The theme of murderous passion within a family circle, played out
for maximum drama, does recall the works of Nisbet's contemporary
Anna Katherine Green.
So does the use of a vividly described architectural
setting, one that seems to partner with the people in the story,
as the protagonist of the tale. In Green's fiction, the setting
often serves as the title of the tale: The Circular Study,
The House of the Whispering Pines, "The Staircase
at the Heart's Delight", and these unusual buildings co-star
with the human characters as a focus of the tale. You also see
this architectural emphasis in such Green-influenced work as Wilkins
Freeman's "The Long Arm". This focus persists in such
American writers as
"The Haunted Station" is reprinted in Stephen Knight's anthology Dead Witness: Best Australian
Mystery Stories (1989), along with many other fascinating tales.
Robert W. Chambers
Robert W. Chambers was an American mainstream, adventure and supernatural writer.
The Purple Emperor: a short story
He is today noted by mystery fans for a single, well done
excursion in their genre, "The Purple Emperor". The
action of this short story is dated to 1894, and was included
in Chambers' 1897 collection, The Mystery of Choice, so
the date of first magazine publication is probably around 1895.
(What a good title The Mystery of Choice is - how richly poetic.)
"The Purple Emperor" is also included in the Ellery Queen anthology
known variously as Sporting Blood (1942) or
The Great Sports Detective Stories.
"The Purple Emperor" explicitly mentions "the detective story" at
one point, contrasting the "real life" of the story
with detective fiction. This is another of the many self-reflexive
references to detective fiction within detective stories themselves.
Links to the Green tradition. "The Purple Emperor" sticks closely to
the paradigms of the detective story laid down by Anna Katherine Green:
There is a great deal
of emphasis on murderous parent-child hatred, just as in Green's
tales. Jealousy and psychotic rage play roles as well. Green,
and her follower Mary Wilkins Freeman, tended to emphasize only
the most violent and corrosive passions as motives for murder.
One might contrast this with later mystery writers, who often
wrote about motives including personal gain, fear of exposure
of past crimes, or the murder victim as the obstacle to some plan
of the suspect - all far less emotionally explosive issues.
Chambers also follows Green in that there is little emphasis on
a pure puzzle plot, but a great deal on detection. All sorts of
clues are followed up, by several of the characters, both amateurs
and the police. (An emphasis on detection was also present in other late 19th Century
traditions - such as the Scientific Detective tales discussed below.)
Chambers also follows Green and Freeman in that
the tale has a carefully delimited small town setting, in this
case, in Brittany in France.
Chambers is perhaps a bit more macho than his female contemporaries, however,
in that the physical violence in this tale is a bit more explicitly
portrayed.
It is perhaps significant that when American mainstream writers
like Freeman and Chambers decided to write detective stories around
1895, they followed the approach of Green, and not of Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes stories, then at the peak of their popularity.
Similarly,
of crime fiction will be based on ,
and largely ignore .
Scientific Detection. During the second half of the 19th Century,
huge numbers of detective and crime short stories were published in
American periodicals. A large selection of these are reprinted in
LeRoy Lad Panek and Mary M. Bendel-Simso's
Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology (2008).
"The Purple Emperor" shows links to traditions found in some of these tales.
(Please see a
of this anthology.)
Some of these stories in Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology
are works of .
"The Purple Emperor" is full of discussions of butterflies and insects,
conducted at a scientific level. The Purple Emperor that gives the tale its title is a kind of butterfly.
Science about insects also plays a role in the detective work that solves the case.
"The Purple Emperor" should be seen as a "scientific detective story", among other things.
A number of the detective tales in Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology
are based on "ingenious idea, through which the detective is able to link the crime to its perpetrator".
This idea is the center, around which the story is constructed.
"The Purple Emperor" is constructed around such an idea, which forms the finale of the tale.
Like some, but not all, of such ideas in tales from Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology,
the idea in "The Purple Emperor" is science-based.
Another Country. "The Purple Emperor" is an early example, of a detective tale
depicting life in an exotic foreign land. We get detailed descriptions of life in a small town
in Brittany, and meet various local "types". And as is common in such stories,
we have an American hero who is visiting the country as a tourist.
Such tales will recur throughout the history of detective fiction.
For example, "The Purple Emperor" anticipates mystery novels by
Three - With Blood (1950) and Mask for Murder (1952),
both of which are set in small towns in Mexico.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
The Long Arm: a short story
Freeman's "The Long Arm" (1895) seems directly inspired
by the Green tradition. There is a murder that enmeshes the protagonist
in a web of crime, one that seems to be an ugly crime of passion
related to her personal life. There is a suggestion that a dutiful
daughter could kill her parents in cold blood - the shocking possibility
put forth by The Leavenworth Case. There is the sending
away to the big city for a detective, somewhat similar to the
Book 3 of The Leavenworth Case, where detectives are sent
to a small town. Finally, the case is unraveled, proving the daughter
is innocent, and that an outsider did the crime. The motives for
the crime lie in passionate encounters in the distant past - this
is exactly the pattern of denouements in some Green tales (and
in works by other Gaboriauistes). Freeman's ta
it is unusual without being great. It is included here as something
of a curiosity.
Freeman corresponded with Green, sending her fan letters, according
to Green biographer Patricia D. Maida. See Patricia D. Maida's
Mother of Detective Fiction: The Life and Works of Anna Katherine Green (1989).
"Doc" Gordon
Freeman's "Doc" Gordon (1905), was blurbed by
her publisher as a novel of mystery, although this book seems
to be unknown to historians of mystery. Read today, it seems more
like a melodrama or romance, about a family with a lot of personal
secrets. Its ancestors seem more to be the
novels of the 1860's, rather than the pure mysteries of Green.
Its long opening chapter includes some vivid description of small
town New Jersey life of the era. After this, the book slides into
grimness and dullness, although it does deal with social issues
that are still of current interest.
Mainstream Short Stories
Freeman was mainly a mainstream
author, successful in her day, and still prestigious in ours.
For the record, my favorite Freeman non-mystery short stories
are "Louisa" and "The Lombardy Poplar".
I also enjoyed "A Mistaken Charity", "A Church Mouse",
"The Revolt of Mother" and "A Poetess".
Pauline E. Hopkins
Pauline E. Hopkins was an African-American, one of the earliest
to publish a mystery story.
Talma Gordon: a short story
Another mystery short story by a mainstream author showing the influence
of Anna Katherine Green, is Pauline E. Hopkins' "Talma Gordon"
(1900). It deals with two sisters who are suspects in the murder
of their father, similar to The Leavenworth Case (1878).
It also has the elaborate, emotion laden prose style familiar
from Green.
This story is better as mainstream
tale than as a mystery. The rather ordinary locked room plot is
given two separate solutions by the author, one legitimate and
fair, the other now considered pass