Not Ms. Green's best work, sadly. The pace is erratic and the tale often slows to a point where it struggles to hold interest in the reader. That doesn't hold true for much of her writing, so why it should do so here, I confess I don't understand; she can write far better than this when she tries. The solution to the ultimate crime feels a bit "humbugged-up", but I shan't say more about that. The apparent revelation leading to it? Well, it removes much confidence in the investigator to see that he almost had to be told outright to understand or imagine the link, when I as a reader had worked it out a long time previously from exactly the same information the investigating party had been given. Reading this tale a century or so after its original publication, many of the plot devices that have since become tropes of the genre are easily recognised. Unfortunately, that has a detrimental effect on the story itself for modern-day readers. I imagine it might have been more of a mystery in its original time; that's why I give it 3 stars, as while the story drags and the of-its-time sexism annoys me, when it was written it was, to a certain degree, quite fresh and innovative, so it deserves a little credit for that.
