I was chopping onions for a biryani that absolutely no one asked me to make when Miss Amelia Butterworth first opened her mouth - and I knew immediately I was in for something special.
Look, I study why people do what they do for a living. And Miss Butterworth? She's a fascinating case study in Victorian spinster psychology that I didn't know I needed. This nosy, judgmental, absolutely delightful busybody witnesses something suspicious at the house next door and decides she's going to solve the murder herself, thank you very much, the police can just follow along.
The Psychology of the Victorian Busybody
What makes this character compelling is that Anna Katharine Green understood something fundamental about human nature: bored, intelligent people with too much time and too little outlet become either depressed or detective. Miss Butterworth chose detective. And honestly? My therapist would have thoughts about this character - the way she channels her social isolation and lack of meaningful occupation into obsessive observation of her neighbors. It's not healthy, but it is effective.
The protagonist exhibits classic displacement behavior. She can't control her own life circumstances - an unmarried woman of means in 1897 has precious few options - so she controls information instead. She watches. She catalogues. She judges. (The judging is constant and spectacular.) And when a dead woman turns up under a cabinet in the empty house next door, all that pent-up observational energy finally has somewhere to go.
Green wrote this in 1897, and it shows in the pacing. This is not a thriller. This is a slow, methodical unwinding of clues and social dynamics that requires patience. I found myself asking: why does Miss Butterworth really care so much about this mystery? The answer, buried under layers of Victorian propriety, is loneliness. She wants to matter. She wants to be seen as capable. And she absolutely wants to prove she's smarter than Detective Gryce, who underestimates her at every turn.
Dawn Larsen's Narration - A Mixed Bag
Okay, so here's where I have to be honest. Dawn Larsen does solid work differentiating characters, and her pacing matches the deliberate Victorian style of the prose. The story is engaging when she leans into Miss Butterworth's particular brand of righteous nosiness.
But - and this is a real but - eleven hours is a long time to spend with a narrator whose accent choices occasionally feel a bit off for the period and setting. Some reviewers have noted this, and I noticed it too. There were moments where I'd be deep in the mystery and then a voice would pull me out because it didn't quite fit the character. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's there.
The production quality is generally clean, though I caught what might have been some minor background noise in a few sections. (Or maybe that was my pressure cooker. Hard to say.)
What Larsen does well is maintain the story's tension through pacing. She doesn't rush the reveals, which is important because Green's plotting depends on gradual accumulation of detail. The twist at the end lands partly because Larsen has been building toward it steadily, letting each piece of evidence settle before moving on.
Who This Is Actually For
Let's be real for a second. This is not for everyone.
If you need action every chapter, skip this. If Victorian prose makes you want to scream, skip this. If you're looking for something to half-listen to while doing high-focus work, definitely skip this - you'll miss crucial details and then be confused about who's dead and why.
But if you're the kind of person who grew up on Agatha Christie (hello, fellow child of immigrant parents who discovered British mysteries through inexplicable cultural osmosis), this is basically the American grandmother of that whole tradition. Green was writing detective fiction before Conan Doyle made it fashionable. Miss Butterworth predates Miss Marple by decades.
This works best during activities that occupy your hands but not your brain - cooking, as I discovered, or long walks, or folding laundry. The eleven-hour runtime means you'll need commitment. I spread it over about a week of morning jogs and evening cooking sessions.
The Verdict
Psychologically, this tracks. The character motivations are solid, the mystery is satisfyingly complex, and Green clearly understood the particular frustrations of intelligent women trapped by social convention. Miss Butterworth is not a likeable protagonist in the modern sense - she's snobbish and judgmental and absolutely convinced of her own superiority - but she's believable. And in Victorian fiction, that's rarer than you'd think.
The narration is competent but not exceptional. Larsen does the job, brings reasonable character differentiation, and maintains appropriate pacing. Some accent inconsistencies and the occasional production hiccup keep this from being a standout audio experience, but it doesn't ruin anything either.
If you're interested in the history of detective fiction, or if you want to spend time with a protagonist whose psychological profile is genuinely interesting, this is worth your time. Just know what you're getting into: Victorian pacing, Victorian prose, and a Victorian woman who would absolutely be running a true crime podcast if she lived today.
(Don't tell my students I spent this much time analyzing a 127-year-old mystery novel. They already think I have no life.)
