Difficult Problem

Can a perfect crime be detected even when there appears to be no crime at all? In A Difficult Problem Anna Katharine Green delivers a thought-provoking short mystery that unravels not through action but deduction. At the heart of the story is a seemingly innocent dinner party and a suspicious death that leaves one woman troubled by the unease that lingers in the aftermath. What she intuits-though others dismiss it is that something is amiss and perhaps terribly wrong. With elegant brevity and subtle tension Green builds a case from whispered observations minute details and moral instinct. A pioneer of the classic detective form she demonstrates how questions of ethics guilt and intuition often reveal more than overt evidence. This story is a brilliant example of how crime fiction can explore not only what happened but what should have happened and whether knowing the truth is ever enough.