
Mystery Stories of Violet Strange
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Narrated by:
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Shelly Frasier
The quirky tales of detection include:
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Editorial reviews
Anna Katharine Green was a pioneer of early American detective stories, and as such has been called "the mother of the detective novel". Collected in this audiobook are her clever and amusing Violet Strange mysteries. Listen along as Violet Strange, while publicly just another New York City socialite, sneaks about secretly solving mysteries for a private detective agency. Veteran narrator, Shelly Frasier, gives an engaging performance, bringing to life all the characters from such stories as "The Golden Slipper", "The Grotto Spectre", and "The Second Bullet".
Mysteries with a Twist of Gothic Angst
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by Anna Katherine Green
(note: audiobook produced by Tantor Audio as Mystery Stories of Violet Strange)
Violet Strange is a popular, pretty, sparkling society belle of America's Gilded Age. Secretly, however, she is an agent for a private investigator, willing to use her intelligence and powers of observation to do work she finds unpleasant for a salary that she doesn't appear to need. Her secret is revealed slowly in a larger story arc that surrounds the nine stories of her cases.
Green (1846-1935), justly popular at the time and one of my favorite American authors, was among the first authors of the modern "detective story". Violet is often credited as the first "girl detective".
Tantor Audio does a disservice to the stories by referring to them as "mystery stories"; they are in fact, her adventures or experiences or, in some cases, just stories that Violet appears in as a more minor character. Expecting them to be mysteries will cause unfulfilled expectations in the reader, making the book less enjoyable.
As mentioned above, these stories are not really detective stories; they are, as Green's original title states, "problems". In some, Violet sets up a trap so that whoever the malefactor is, they will give themselves away. In others, her intelligence and powers of observation serve her to find a missing object or see an obscure element of the case. In one instance, she doesn't come to the right conclusion at all. They are still good tales, though, as Green was good at interesting plots and surprising solutions. The main flaw in this collection is that Violet is shoehorned into them all even though it's a stretch to do so, and there are times when she doesn't fit in at all. If Green had written them without Violet and with no connection to each other, this would have been a four star -- if not five -- collection of intriguing puzzles.
I still recommend them, for those who enjoy mysteries from this time period, as long as the reader takes the above into consideration.
Ms. Frasier's performance was disappointing at times, as she only had a limited number of voices for males, and not many more for females.
Puzzles, Not Mysteries
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A little dark but good!
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Interesting Mystery Stories
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I really enjoyed this one!
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A fun Mystery and dective set in the late 1800's!
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great stories, poor narrator choice for character
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Author who inspired Agatha Christie
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Love the language
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Very tame
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