Although Anna Katharine Green was neither the first woman to publish crime fiction nor the first American to write a detective novel, her efforts were taken as distinctive advances in a genre that had only begun to emerge as a separate literary form. Many of the features with which mystery devotees were to become familiar were utilized in her works. With the wise and methodical detective as a pivotal figure, clues and evidence were adroitly dispersed about her narrative, and from a relatively small number of suspects, solutions that were startling and yet plausible were reached. Many of Green’s novels concerned family crises, where secret marriages, scheming relatives, or missing persons added poignant notes of lurking intrigues; her works were constructed systematically, around factual questions, clearly differentiating themselves from the novels of the mid-Victorian period. Affinities with gothic fiction arose here and there, where Green suggested ghosts and strange footfalls, but these signs became explicable in all cases when crimes and other secrets were laid open. For some time early in her life, Green had written Romantic poetry, and the atmosphere and overtones associated with that genre probably impart some melodramatic qualities to her detective novels. While several influences seem to converge in her work, Green’s crime fiction also promoted relatively new forms of evidence and reasoning.

Particular mention should be made of early reactions to Green’s writings, which did much to preserve her reputation even after the vicissitudes of literary tastes seemed to turn against her works. After her first novel, The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story (1878), was published, under her own name, the Pennsylvania legislature debated whether its author actually could have been a woman. Later the novel was used at Yale University for the purpose of illustrating means by which circumstantial evidence could be misleading. Wilkie Collins acknowledged his admiration for the powers of imagination manifested in that work. Green’s novels were steadily in demand throughout her lifetime; among the American and British statesmen who enjoyed her works were Woodrow Wilson and Stanley Baldwin. Although subsequently her renown declined as readers’ preferences turned toward shorter works of a more straightforward style, specialists repeatedly have accorded Green a place of importance in the development of mystery fiction. For that matter, special honorable citations of her efforts were made by leading characters in the fiction of John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. Green has also received attention as a female writer whose position in the field of detective fiction indicated the paths by which the genre could be enriched.