If you like early murder mysteries then try The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green
By cosmos_lantern23956
Just finished it and I honestly feel like I went on some kind of journey with it. It’s a murder mystery and pretty classic “who did it” stuff, but it was published in 1878, so that’s way before any Sherlock Holmes tales and even way ahead of Agatha Christie. It’s also often talked about as the first detective fiction thing, and yet it already has all the usual ingredients—this oddball detective, a plot that actually feels tangled, red herrings, secrets/backstories you don’t see coming, and even some forensic-style analysis. The writing does drift into overly fancy “purple” moments sometimes, but I got used to it pretty quick. Basically, there are two orphaned girls raised together by a wealthy industrialist, like real sisters. One ends up being insanely beautiful, and the other is more complicated and thoughtful. Then the man ends up dead, and his door was locked… and they were the only ones in the house. Or maybe not? The suspicion keeps swinging between them, and once more people get pulled in, you start realizing how messy and layered the whole night really was. It’s told through a Watson-like sidekick watching Ebenezer Gryce, this strange detective with his own quirks. By the end I felt like even someone who thinks they’re good at guessing would probably keep changing their mind about who’s guilty. Anna Katharine Green is American and it’s set in New York, but the whole vibe is still really that English whodunnit genre—though I kept getting little reminders that it wasn’t London or St Mary Mead or anything like that. Also, I learned Green wrote a ton more mysteries after this (32 more, apparently), so now I’m kind of excited to binge through them.