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4.5
Seeley Regester (real name Metta Victor) must have been an amazing person. She not only wrote over a hundred books and had nine children, she produced this crime novel, the first by an American, which was to influence Anna Katherine Green, and through her Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Their work achieved lasting fame. Metta Victor was (unjustly) forgotten.The Dead Letter is replete with wonderful nineteenth-century characters — a blighted bride, a murderer with deadly knowledge of anatomy, a ghost, a child psychic — and a detective with extraordinary powers. Mr. Burton can sense viscerally the presence of a criminal (or, for that matter, a very good person). And just by looking at a criminal’s handwriting, he can deduce age, appearance, profession and mental qualities!Burton devotes himself for years to finding the murderer of Henry Moreland, a young man of such sterling character that his bride-to-be mourns him for the rest of her life. Burton is assisted by another upright and sensitive young man who has himself been cruelly suspected of the murder.The Dead Letter is an adventure story that spans continents. It’s a tear-jerker drenched in sentimentality, melodrama, and Victorian ethics. It’s a love story that encompasses the living and the dead. If you have a taste for Victorian sensation novels (I love them), you will revel in The Dead Letter. If you’re interested in the evolution of crime fiction, you won’t want to bypass this pivotal mystery.
