Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Der Fall Leavenworth
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love carefully constructed mysteries, a courtroom flavor and the manners of the 1870s, and anyone curious about how the modern detective story began.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Leavenworth Case is a detective novel by Anna Katharine Green, first published in 1878. It is set in New York, in a wealthy household on Fifth Avenue, where a rich merchant named Horatio Leavenworth is found shot dead in his own library. Green was the daughter of a lawyer, and she wrote the book with a lawyer's respect for evidence, testimony and proof. It is often counted among the early American detective novels, and it brought the patient police detective Ebenezer Gryce into print.
The story is told by Everett Raymond, a young lawyer who is drawn into the case on the morning after the crime. He meets the dead man's two nieces, Mary and Eleanore Leavenworth, who are very different in their position and prospects. As the inquiry goes on, suspicion gathers around the household, and Raymond finds that his own feelings cloud his judgment. In this summary you will meet the main people, follow the investigation step by step, and see how Green builds suspense out of rooms, timetables and what people will not say. Let us begin with the shock of that first morning.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A rich man is found deadFree
- 2Two nieces and a great fortune
- 3Gryce enters with his quiet method
- 4Servants, secretary and suspicion
- 5Raymond must choose between heart and proof
- 6What the novel is about and how it works
Punkt 1 von 6
A rich man is found dead
The novel opens with Everett Raymond, a junior partner in a law firm, called to the Leavenworth mansion on Fifth Avenue. Horatio Leavenworth, the head of the house, has been found shot in the library. He was a wealthy merchant, and the house is the kind of place where money, order and privacy are taken for granted. Now police officers move through its quiet rooms.
Raymond comes as a lawyer who knew the family through his firm. He is shown the scene and hears the first accounts from the servants. Green gives these early pages a sober, factual tone. The reader learns where the body lay, who found it, and which doors and windows matter.
The setting is part of the point. A murder inside a respectable home means that the killer is probably someone who lives there or knows its ways. Every polite face at the breakfast table becomes a possible suspect. Green uses this idea to make ordinary politeness feel tense.
Raymond tells the story in the first person, looking back on events he took part in. That gives him a double role. He is a witness who sees the clues, and he is a man with a stake in the outcome. From the start, the reader hears the case through a narrator who cannot be fully calm about it.
The opening also sets out the question the whole book will turn on. Who in this house had a reason to want Horatio Leavenworth dead, and who had the chance? Green holds back the answer for hundreds of pages, and she does it by adding facts, not by adding action.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Der Fall Leavenworth
What is The Leavenworth Case about?
It is a detective novel about the murder of a wealthy New York merchant, Horatio Leavenworth, in his library. A young lawyer and a police detective investigate while suspicion falls on the household and the dead man's two nieces.
Who is Ebenezer Gryce?
Gryce is the quiet, patient police detective in the novel. He works by listening, comparing testimony and watching people closely. Anna Katharine Green brought him back in later books, and he is seen as an early detective hero.
When was The Leavenworth Case written and is it a true story?
Anna Katharine Green published it in 1878. It is fiction, but it draws on the real legal and police methods of the time, such as inquests, testimony and the reading of wills, which gives it a realistic feel.
Is The Leavenworth Case hard to read?
Not very. The plot moves steadily through testimony and clues, so readers settle into it quickly.
Why is The Leavenworth Case important?
It was one of the first widely read American detective novels, and it helped set habits of the genre, such as the police detective, the closed circle of suspects and the careful gathering of evidence. Wilkie Collins is said to have admired it.