Anna Katharine Green was one of the first women to write detective stories & this book with a series detective was published nearly ten years before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began publishing his Sherlock Holmes stories.

Leavenworth is a New York merchant whose material wealth is matched by his eminence in the community and reputation for good works. He is also the guardian of two striking nieces who share his Fifth Avenue mansion. Mary, her uncle's favorite, is to inherit his fortune at his death. As this mystery opens, that lamentable event has just occurred. Leavenworth has been shot to death and circumstances point to one of his young wards. Yet the case is not as concrete as it seems.

The first mystery of its kind, introducing detective Ebenezer Gryce, Green changed the mystery genre with her distinctive verse and style.

Anna Katharine Green was a pioneer of detective fiction. This was her first novel & she went on to write more books featuring Ebenezer Gryce , as well as other series with her spinster detective Amelia Butterworth & Violet Strange.