Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post

Description

Published in 1918, this collection of 18 linked mystery stories set in early-1800s Virginia is considered a landmark of the American detective short story and a key influence on the "impossible crime" mystery tradition. Uncle Abner, a devout and formidable landowner, solves crimes the local law can't touch.

Excerpt

THE pioneer was not the only man in the great mountains behind Virginia. Strange aliens drifted in after the Colonial wars. All foreign armies are sprinkled with a cockle of adventurers that take root and remain. They were with Braddock and La Salle, and they rode north out of Mexico after her many empires went to pieces.

I think Doomdorf crossed the seas with Iturbide when that ill-starred adventurer returned to be shot against a wall; but there was no Southern blood in him. He came from some European race remote and barbaric. He was a huge figure of a man, with a black spade beard, broad, thick hands, and square, flat fingers.