Audiobook · read by volunteers
That Affair Next Door
Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935)
Read by Dawn Larsen · 22 chapters · 11 h 09
About the book
In a fashionable New York street, the house next door stands empty while its owners are away. Then a woman is found dead there, beneath a heavy cabinet. The cabinet seems to have fallen on her, but the doctors say she had been dead for hours before it came down. Who was she, and what was she doing alone in a house where no one should have been? A neighbour, Miss Amelia Butterworth, a respectable and very observant spinster, cannot resist taking an interest, and she soon finds herself working alongside the veteran detective Ebenezer Gryce. Clues multiply, each one pointing somewhere new, and the answers lie in the hidden lives of people who seem entirely respectable. Anna Katharine Green builds her suspense with patience and a sharp ear for what is left unsaid. It is a classic puzzle of early American detective fiction, ready for a long evening and full of small surprises.
Introduction
Anna Katharine Green, who lived from 1846 to 1935, is often called the mother of American detective fiction. Her first book, The Leavenworth Case, appeared in 1878, and she went on to write dozens of mysteries that were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Among her most durable creations is the patient Detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York police, who appears in this story. That Affair Next Door was published in 1897 and introduced another of her characters, the sharp-eyed spinster Amelia Butterworth.
The plot begins with a puzzle that is set out in the opening pages and never lets go: a body in a house that should have been empty, a heavy cabinet, and a timeline that does not fit. What follows is a case solved by observation and conversation, in a New York of drawing rooms, servants and carefully kept appearances. Green began as an aspiring poet, and her prose is composed and measured, even when the plot becomes tense.
The recording has 22 chapters and lasts about eleven hours. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer, and the narrator’s steady voice suits the story’s gradual build. Today, the book is worth hearing both as an enjoyable mystery and as an early example of the genre in which a clever woman steps in where the professionals hesitate. The mystery rests on small observations rather than on violence, and the listener is invited to follow the reasoning step by step. It is an agreeable book for a long listen, with enough twists to keep you guessing until the final chapters.
Public domain
Anna Katharine Green died in 1935: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text