The Leavenworth Case

What It's About

Wealthy New Yorker Horatio Leavenworth is found shot dead in the library of his own home, with the doors locked and no sign of forced entry. The only witnesses are his household: two nieces, several servants, and a private secretary, all of whom seem to have something to hide. Young lawyer Everett Raymond, drawn into the case through a professional connection, works alongside the shrewd detective Ebenezer Gryce to piece together the truth from conflicting testimony, inheritance motives, and a web of half-truths within the family.

Key Concepts

Published in 1878, this is widely regarded as one of the first detective novels written by an American, and one of the first written by a woman anywhere. It was praised on release for its unusually accurate depiction of legal and criminal procedure, a realism the author drew from her father's career as a trial lawyer. The novel helped establish conventions that would come to define the genre: the methodical, unassuming detective (Ebenezer Gryce, who would go on to appear in several of Green's later novels), the amateur narrator drawn into the investigation, and a plot built around courtroom-style deduction from physical evidence.

About the Author

Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist and poet, born in Brooklyn, New York, to a trial lawyer father whose work shaped her later fiction. She originally hoped to build a career as a poet, but it was her turn to detective fiction that brought her lasting success, earning her the popular title "the mother of the detective novel."