Anna Katharine Green
(1846-1935)
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Green's early ambition was to write romantic verse, and she corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing about 40 books. Green was in some ways a progressive woman for her time—succeeding in a genre dominated by male writers—but she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women's suffrage.
Green married the actor, and later designer and artist, Charles Rohlfs on November 25, 1884. They had one daughter and two sons, Roland Rohlfs and Sterling Rohlfs, who were test pilots. Green died in Buffalo, New York, at the age of 88.
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 or encounter; 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 Emile Gaboriau, and one finds similar Gaboriau inspired flashbacks in such Sherlock Holmes novels as 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.
