Reading record 18

 I decided to go ahead and finish up reading that ebook short story collection off Project Gutenberg.  There were only a couple stories left, so....

The collection is called The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katherine Green.

The ebook itself doesn't say when it was written, and I've forgotten (and don't feel like bothering to look it up at the moment) but I'm wanting to say in the neighborhood of 1900-1910.  There isn't electricity, only gas lighting, and there's no mention of WWI, but there do seem to be automobiles, so...my detailed knowledge of the early years of the 20th century is too sparse to be helpful.  Or rather, too absent.  I have some general knowledge of that period, but very few details, because my interest in history has always been further away from the present than that.

Trying to pin down when it was written is also compounded by the difficulty that despite being set in New York, the author seems to have been English:  British spellings are used, and one man on surrendering himself for a murder asked if the procedure was to take him directly before the magistrate.  (Or something like that.  Key detail being that he said "magistrate" rather than "judge.")

Anyway.

Much better than the earlier ebook of mystery stories from about the same time period.  The mysteries themselves were not always particularly good or mysterious (one problem with a short story mystery is that when one extraneous character is introduced partway through the story, then you know that they're the culprit!), but despite the heroine's wealthy status, they were at least not particularly classist.  Racism had little to no opportunity to arise (though that in itself is actually rather racist), but there was still some internalized misogyny, though at least it wasn't too bad.

Honestly, my biggest problem with it was something also shared by the other one, by Baroness Orczy, which is that an "explanation" for the female detective was provided at the end.  An explanation and an end to her detecting:  she had a purpose, and having fulfilled it, she no longer needed to take on cases.  Frustrating, to say the least.  Male detectives in this period were surely never given an explicit reason to be taking cases (aside from it literally being their job, as I'm sure there were plenty of stories written about police detectives) nor a reason to stop taking those cases.  When a reason was provided, it would surely have been to serve justice or to prevent injustice, or similar aphorisms along those lines.  Not to seek the chance to prove her beloved's innocence (Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly) or to earn money to pay for something very expensive that was necessary for her disowned sister to regain a comfortable life (Violet Strange).  Maybe that was a necessity for writing about a female detective at the time.  I don't know.  But I do know that as a modern reader I found it frustrating.

Still, at least in this case the stories were okay and I don't regret having read them.

Original language:  English

[Hmm.  Been a lot of that lately.  I wonder if there's anything on my to-read shelf (other than 3/4 of a danmei novel that won't get its final volume until September) that isn't originally written in English?  I'm starting to feel weird about bothering to list that at this point, it's been so long since the last one that was originally in any other language...]