The Case of Jennie Brice

"The Case of Jennie Brice" by Mary Roberts Rinehart is a murder mystery novel written in the early 20th century. The story is set against the backdrop of a devastating flood in Pittsburgh, where the main character, a landlady named Pitman, becomes embroiled in a perplexing case involving her boarders, the Ladleys, particularly focusing on the disappearance of Jennie Brice, a local actress. As the floodwaters rise and tensions mount, Pitman finds herself uncovering secrets that suggest something sinister might have occurred. The opening of the novel introduces us to Pitman, who recounts the recent flooding and the return of memories from a prior flood five years earlier, intertwining them with the troubling dynamics between her tenants, Mr. Ladley and his wife, Jennie Brice. The narrative swiftly establishes an atmosphere of impending doom as we learn of the Ladleys' fights and the mysterious presence of a visitor on the night Jennie disappears. Clues quickly pile up, including a slipper belonging to Jennie and a knife from Pitman's belongings, heightening the intrigue and tension. The reader is drawn into the unfolding drama filled with questions about Jennie's fate, further complicated by the unsettled lives of the characters around her. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, which introduced the "had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the earliest known source of the phrase "the butler did it", in her novel The Door (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work and the plot device had been used prior to that time. She also worked to tell the stories and experiences of front line soldiers during World War I, one of the first women to travel to the Belgian front lines.