SOURCE: "Some Minor Voices," in Victorian Masters of Mystery: From Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1984, pp. 155-96.

In the following excerpt, Peterson emphasizes Green's influence on later detective writers, and describes three of Green's principal detectives: Ebenezer Gryce, Amelia Butterworth, and Violet Strange.

The first thing that strikes the reader of Anna Katharine Green's novels is that they sound like modem mystery stories. Their central purpose is to use a crime as a direct puzzle for the reader to solve and they waste no time in getting on with the plot. Wilkie Collins … developed the mystery formula almost by accident, while intent upon writing novels of character and incident. Le Fanu wavered between social comedy and Gothic horror in much of his work. Mary Braddon and James Payn often used sensational crime plots in the manner of Collins, but both engaged in lengthy digressions...