Lost Man’s Lane

The spinster sleuth Amelia Butterworth returns for a second case, and this time Anna Katharine Green sends her out of the city onto a shadowed country road where travelers keep vanishing. At the urging of the veteran detective Gryce, Amelia takes lodging with an eccentric family whose gloomy house sits at the heart of the trouble, and she uses her sharp eye and unimpeachable social standing to gather what a professional man never could. Green paired her amateur and her professional detectives to fine effect, letting Butterworth’s nerve and wit carry a genuinely eerie plot. The result is an early portrait of the woman investigator who would later fill so much of mystery fiction. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.