Item: The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow
Rating: 3.50
Author: murderbydeath

by Anna Katharine Green

It is the noon hour at a museum in New York City. The date: May 23, 1913. The weekday, attendance is light; the attendees are scattered between two floors. Suddenly a cry rings out from the second floor. Scrambling to Section II, the museum director discovers a teenage girl dead with an arrow through her heart. An older woman hovers over her whispering incoherent phrases in the girl's ear and offering incomprehensible answers to the director's questions. She is the only witness to the crime, or accident, as the case may be. How will the feeble, 83 year-old Mr. Gryce unravel this mystery when this witness is apparently insane?

It's a long-term goal of mine to read all of Anna Katherine Green's mysteries and this one has been sitting on my shelves for awhile now. AKG was, and is, considered a strong mystery writer, but as is true of most every writer, her work is sometimes better than others. This was one of the ones that wasn't quite so great, though still an enjoyable read. I imagine Green was going for what we'd call today a police procedural, as the murderer isn't kept a mystery; the reader is made privy to the information the same time Inspector Gryce first voices his suspicions. I'm not a procedural fan, as it contains less puzzle than I prefer. There was also a plot twist that was either poorly hidden, or I'm too jaded, but I called it from the first. Her reveal of it, though, would have knocked my socks off if I hadn't guessed early on. Overall, I enjoyed it and look forward to acquiring more of her work.

Reading updates

8 July, 2020: Started reading

12 July, 2020: Finished reading

31 October, 2020: Reviewed