"An older woman hovers over her whispering incoherent phrases in the girl's ear." That line stopped me cold during a drive through Hill Country last week. A teenage girl, dead from an arrow through the heart in a museum. 1913 New York. And an 83-year-old detective named Gryce who has to untangle the whole mess.
Look, I came to this expecting a dusty antique. What I got was something that reminded me of after-action reports I used to read—methodical, deliberate, and surprisingly brutal in its psychological dissection.
The Tactical Breakdown
Anna Katharine Green gets called the "mother of the detective novel," and after this one, I understand why. This isn't some cozy tea-and-crumpets mystery. She's running a full investigation here—witness interviews, evidence analysis, psychological profiling. The woman was doing procedural crime fiction in 1917. That's over a century ago.
Here's what got me: the psychological complexity. You've got blind ambition, narcissism, obsession, betrayal—the same motivations I've seen destroy careers and families in my consulting work. Human nature doesn't change much. Green adds this gut-punch element where two relatives of the victim sacrifice everything to protect the murderer. That's the kind of loyalty-versus-justice conflict that keeps you awake at night. Power of the Dog wrestles with that same moral territory—good people making terrible choices because loyalty runs deeper than law.
The pacing is deliberate. Some folks will call it slow. I'd call it methodical. Like a good reconnaissance—you don't rush intelligence gathering. But I'll be honest, around the five-hour mark I bumped it up to 1.25x. The vocabulary is rich, the prose is from another era, and sometimes you need that extra push to maintain momentum during highway driving.
Kilmer's Command of the Material
Kilmer brings a somber, almost grave quality to the narration that fits the tragedy at the story's core. A young girl is dead. This isn't a puzzle to be solved for entertainment—there's weight to it, and Kilmer respects that.
His delivery is clear and dramatic without going theatrical. He handles the period language well—and there's a lot of it. Green wrote in a style that's vocabulary-rich and occasionally convoluted by modern standards. Kilmer navigates it without making you feel like you're listening to a museum exhibit.
(Ranger perked up during the museum scenes, by the way. Maybe he appreciated the cultural setting. More likely he heard a squirrel.)
Some listeners found the narration too slow. I get it. This isn't a tactical thriller with explosions every chapter. But for the material, the pace works. Kilmer's somber tone matches the tragic story—a young life cut short, secrets that span years, people willing to destroy themselves for love or loyalty.
Mission Assessment: Who's This For?
Let me cut to the chase: this is for a specific audience. If you appreciate classic detective fiction—the foundation that everything from Agatha Christie to modern procedurals was built on—this delivers. The plot is tight. The psychology is sharp. The mystery actually holds together under scrutiny, which is more than I can say for half the thrillers published last year.
Skip this if you need constant action, modern pacing, or narration that moves at audiobook-thriller speed. The prose is from 1917. It reads like 1917. That's either a feature or a bug depending on your tolerance for period literature.
I found myself thinking about this one after it ended. The central question—why would someone protect a murderer at the cost of their own happiness—stuck with me. I've seen people make inexplicable choices to protect others. Sometimes loyalty overrides logic. Sometimes love makes you stupid. Green understood that.
For fans of Golden Age mysteries or anyone curious about where the genre came from, this is a solid listen. Clean production, competent narration, and a story that's held up for over a century. Not a bad track record.
Ranger approved this one. Though he fell asleep during the slower sections. Fair enough.
