The Leavenworth Case

Anna Katharine Green’s debut became one of the great early bestsellers of American crime fiction and helped set the genre’s shape. A wealthy New York merchant is found shot dead in his locked library, and suspicion falls on the household: his two orphaned nieces, the servants, and a missing secretary. The young lawyer Everett Raymond narrates as the methodical detective Ebenezer Gryce sifts testimony, ballistics, and motive toward an answer no one expects. Green, the daughter of a trial attorney, wrote the coroner’s inquest and courtroom scenes so precisely that the book was reportedly used to teach law students. It appeared nearly a decade before Sherlock Holmes and left a template that lasted. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.