#0008 – 1878: The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green

We encounter a lawyer-narrator, Everett Raymond, with a romantic interest in the outcome of the case, a butler, a SPOILER REDACTED, an initialled handkerchief, a SPOILER REDACTED, and that device beloved of many later Golden Age writers: a numbered listing of significant points. All of these are instantly recognisable from hundreds of detective novels over the following century.

Later he notes how some of these crop up in very similar fashion in Agatha Christie’s debut, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

In the absence of his boss, Everett Raymond is summoned to support the family of the murdered Horatio Leavenworth at the inquest, which is taking place on the same day that the body was discovered. At first sight he falls in love with one of the dead man’s nieces, Eleanore, and when the evidence that is presented paints her in a bad light, he determines to clear her name.

He is allowed to work alongside professional detective, Ebenezer Gryce, who finds him useful in gaining access to a particular suspect from the upper classes and in attending a location of interest when he has a rheumatic attack.

Raymond’s narrative style is overblown and his complete faith in the innocence of Eleanore and her cousin, Mary, in the teeth of the evidence, purely because they are ladies, is very annoying.

In a chilling sign of the times, when discussing marital law, Raymond says:

Of old, the modes of getting a wife were the same as those of acquiring any other species of property, and they are not materially changed at the present time… as to the young lady’s age, I will merely say that any fourteen-year-old girl can be a party to a marriage contract.

Gryce has to resort to a trick to unmask the murderer because he doesn’t actually know exactly whodunnit.

This book is an important stepping stone to the Golden Age but, unless you are particularly interested in its development, it isn’t really worth reading for its own sake. I am keeping my copy for the time being purely because it is one of the very nice Detective Story Club Classic hardbacks.

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