Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs died on April 11, 1935 at the age of 89. Called the “Mother of the American Detective Story”, Anna’s 1878 book The Leavenworth Case is widely regarded as the first American detective novel. It is also the first such novel ever written by a woman, and in the views of some historians, the first bona fide American bestseller, selling a staggering 250,000 copies over a 15-year period. Born in 1846 in New York, Anna was the daughter of a prominent attorney (who was the source of her knowledge of legal and police matters). She was college educated—rare for a woman of that time—and initially embarked on a career as a poet, but found no success. She began working on The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story in secret and spent six years on the manuscript, an effort that resulted in overnight success and fame upon its publication by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Green would marry and ultimately support a struggling young actor named Charles Rohlfs, who would later appear in a stage production of The Leavenworth Case before finding great success as a furniture designer. (Some of his work can be found in Buckingham Palace.) Mrs. Green Rohlf’s influence and reputation were so great at the time that Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) made a point of seeking her out during an 1894 visit to the United States. Green raised a family, but still managed to turn out more than three dozen more books over the next 45 years. None of them would have the impact of The Leavenworth Case, which was so highly regarded for its insight into legal matters that it was used in Yale University law classes as an example of the perils of trusting circumstantial evidence. Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs is buried in section 27 in Forest Lawn.