Detective Sweetwater's Cases

Book excerpt: Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel". As journalist Kathy Hickman writes, Green "stamped the mystery genre with the distinctive features that would influence writers from Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle to contemporary authors of suspenseful "whodunits". The Caleb Sweetwater Mysteries is a collection of three novels featuring Caleb Sweetwater, a policeman in New York City. Anna Katharine Green is credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form, and developing the series detective. Contents: Agatha Webb The Woman in the Alcove The House of the Whispering Pines