Laura Lemay reviewed The Golden Slipper by Anna Katharine Green
Review of "The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I continue ranging through the Girl Detective genre, with this book dating to 1915 and representing what seems to be the invention of the concept.
Violet Strange is a young upper class socialite who has a side job solving mysteries. The book is a series of shorter stories, roughly interconnected, with an ending that ties up the loose ends and fills in the back story. I enjoyed reading most of the stories, although a lot of the time the mystery or puzzle seemed to resolve itself either because Violet understood some aspect of the problem that was never revealed to the reader, or sometimes even resolved itself through no action of Violet’s at all. It improved toward the end, however, and a handful of stories were genuinely creepy.