Books in Dell great mystery library series

Anna Katherine Green's first book, "The Leavenworth Case," published in 1878, was the first American best-selling novel. It sold a quarter of a million copies, and earned Green the title of "The Mother of the Detective Novel." The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock, published in 1895, features the same hero, detective Ebenezer Gryce, a low key, middle aged New York police officer, plus his many assistants. A contemporary Gryce narrates a gripping drama from his youth, the opening scene of which has been described as "one of the most hallucinatory in modern fiction." Green excelled at detection, the gradual uncovering of hidden facts about a crime. This story is set in the time and place of Green's own childhood, the New York City of the 1850s. Green influenced many other writers. An 1894 fan letter to Green from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, survives. Agatha Christie records in her autobiography that Green's works inspired her to become a mystery writer. You too will be inspired by this work from one of the century's greatest fiction masters!