That Affair Next Door. By Anna Katharine Green. (G. P.
Putnam's Sons.)—This story seems to prove that the hand of the eminent American artist in fiction who wrote " The Leaven- worth Case " has, instead of losing its cunning, gained in facility. Miss Butterworth, the inquisitive, but not unamiable, spinster, who sees a man and a woman arrive at the house next to her own, and subsequently finds this same woman—as she believed— lying murdered in the house, and sets to work to unravel the mystery, and bring the murderer to justice, does her work with great ability, and in doing so reveals a good deal of genuine American grit and character. To a certain extent the book re- solves itself into a not unfriendly competition between Mr. Gryce, the professional detective, and Miss Butterworth, the amateur. If the professional is beaten in the long run, that is simply because old age is beginning to tell upon him, and success has produced too much confidence. Even the veteran reader of sensational fiction will admit that Mrs. Rohlfs—for this is the name now borne by the lady who will still, however, he generally known by her maiden designation of Anna Katharine Green— has preserved the secret of the murder till towards the very close. At an early stage in the narrative one may have some suspicion that the excited girl whose name turns out to be Ruth Oliver knows something of what has taken place. But no suspicion rests, or can rest, on the "society" gentleman, Randolph Stone, until, when he is about to marry the heiress, Miss Althorpe, he is convicted of murder by the discarded wife, in mistake for whom he makes away with another woman. The domestic troubles among the members of the Van Burnam family, which help to send off the public and Mrs. Rohlfs's readers on a false scent, form an admirable feature in the plot. Altogether That Affair Next Door is a masterpiece in its way.
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