The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange Free online reading

Seventeen-year-old Violet Strange, a debutante in Gilded Age New York, could never be suspected of moonlighting as an operative at a hard-boiled detective agency. Petite, gabby, and dimpled - a darling of balls and teas - she charms all she meets, slyly gaining access to crime scenes and cleverly teasing out clues no one else perceives. But her prospects will be destroyed if her detective work comes to light, and her father, a financier with implacable ideas of propriety, is "quite capable of cutting her off with a shilling". Why would a society belle of such wealth and privilege risk all for this "uncongenial" pursuit?

Anna Katherine Green, the mother of the detective novel, introduces the world to the first "girl detective" in this delightful collection of nine stories published in 1915.