The Female Detective: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Female Detective, credited to Andrew Forrester, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers. This 1864 collection of stories is one of the first books featuring a female detective character. Andrew Forrester (pseudonym of James Redding Ware) presents himself as editor of these “memoirs,” though he is actually the author. Our detective is anonymous, writing only as the first person “I,” beginning the introduction with, “Who am I? It can matter little who I am.” Her reason for writing the book is to show “…that the profession to which I belong is so useful that it should not be despised.” Throughout the stories, besides the events of her cases recounted, she weaves commentaries about detective work itself. In these seven London-set stories, our detective methodically lays out her reasoning toward solutions of cases ranging from suspicious death whodunnits to identification of a bag of body parts to answering the question of whether a death even was a murder. Enjoy this entertaining example of early detective fiction! - Summary by Verla Viera

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Female Detective
• Author credits: Andrew Forrester
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 24
• Listed recording duration: 8:09:28

Catalogue topics

• Detective
• Mystery
• London
• detective fiction
• mysteries
• detectives
• female detectives
• murder mysteries

Track guide

1. 01 - Introduction — 6:40
2. 02 - Tenant for Life, Part 1 — 20:38
3. 03 - Tenant for Life, Part 2 — 17:41
4. 04 - Tenant for Life, Part 3 — 21:10
5. 05 - Tenant for Life, Part 4 — 15:05
6. 06 - Tenant for Life, Part 5 — 19:59
7. 07 - Tenant for Life, Part 6 — 22:38
8. 08 - Tenant for Life, Part 7 — 15:47
9. 09 - Georgy — 26:06
10. 10 - The Unraveled Mystery, Part 1 — 20:12
11. 11 - The Unraveled Mystery, Part 2 — 16:30
12. 12 - The Judgment of Conscience, Part 1 — 21:30
13. 13 - The Judgment of Conscience, Part 2 — 23:26
14. 14 - The Judgment of Conscience, Part 3 — 19:00
15. 15 - A Child Found Dead: Murder or No Murder, Part 1 — 20:05
16. 16 - A Child Found Dead: Murder or No Murder, Part 2 — 20:26
17. 17 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 1 — 22:12
18. 18 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 2 — 20:37
19. 19 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 3 — 20:27
20. 20 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 4 — 20:14
21. 21 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 5 — 23:06
22. 22 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 6 — 24:15
23. 23 - The Unknown Weapon, Part 7 — 26:38
24. 24 - The Mystery — 25:06

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.