This image is the cover for the book Dead Letter

Dead Letter

A love triangle turns deadly in the first full-length detective novel by an American author

Published a decade prior to Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case (1878), The Dead Letter concerns the murder of Henry Moreland, whose body is found just a few steps from the home of John Argyll, Esq. Moreland was engaged to Argyll’s daughter, Eleanor, and suspicion soon falls upon the lawyer’s protégé, Richard Redfield. Desperate to clear his name, Redfield seeks the help of Mr. Burton, a famous New York City detective—but the case has more twists and turns than either of the two men could possibly imagine.

Set against the political turmoil of the Reconstruction Era, The Dead Letter is a fascinating historical document, a pioneering work of genre fiction, and a mystery with a cleverly satisfying conclusion.

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Seeley Regester

Seeley Regester (1831–1885) was the pseudonym of Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, one of the most popular and prolific authors of mid-nineteenth-century America. She published more than one hundred novels in a wide variety of genres, including romance, Westerns, temperance novels, and children’s literature. She is best remembered for The Dead Letter (1867), the first full-length work of crime fiction by an American author. Her abolitionist dime novel, Maum Guinea, and Her Plantation “Children” (1861), was praised by Abraham Lincoln.

Open Road Integrated Media