'The Forsaken Inn' is a mystery novel by Anna Katharine Green. The story takes place in an abandoned little inn in New York where a man named Edwin Urquhart took his bride on honeymoon. Yet this happy occasion turned into a tragedy unexpectedly when his new wife was found dead...

The Forsaken Inn

The Forsaken Inn is a historical mystery novel set in the late 18th century, about a young newly-wed couple staying the night at the Inn, and leaving the next day. Several years later a secret room is discovered with the bride's body in it. But, many people saw the bride leave with her new husband. How is that possible? Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel". She stamped the mystery genre with the distinctive features that would influence writers from Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle to contemporary authors of suspenseful "whodunits".

The Forsaken InnBy Anna Katharine Green

WAS riding between Albany and Poughkeepsie. It was raining furiously, and my horse, already weary with long travel, gave unmistakable signs of discouragement. I was, therefore, greatly relieved when, in the most desolate part of the road, I espied rising before me the dim outlines of a house, and was correspondingly disappointed when, upon riding forward, I perceived that it was but a deserted ruin I was approaching, whose fallen chimneys and broken windows betrayed a dilapidation so great that I could scarcely hope to find so much as a temporary shelter therein. Nevertheless, I was so tired of the biting storm that I involuntarily stopped before the decayed and forbidding structure, and was, in truth, withdrawing my foot from the stirrup, when I heard an unexpected exclamation behind me, and turning, saw a chaise, from the open front of which leaned a gentleman of most attractive appearance. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "Hide my head from the storm," was my hurried rejoinder. "I am tired, and so is my horse, and the town, according to all appearances, must be at least two miles distant." "No matter if it is three miles! You must not take shelter in that charnel-house," he muttered; and moved along in his seat as if to show me there was room beside him.