The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow

A young woman is killed in a New York City museum by an arrow fired from an ancient bow on display. The attack occurs in daylight and in the presence of visitors, yet no one can identify the person who used the weapon. The public setting turns the crime into an apparent impossibility: the evidence is visible, but the decisive action has escaped observation.

The investigation brings in the experienced detective Ebenezer Gryce and his associate Sweetwater. Gryce is older than in his earlier cases and depends increasingly on Sweetwater's mobility and close attention. Together they reconstruct movement through the museum, examine the victim's past, and test the hidden motives and identities behind the witnesses' accounts.

Anna Katharine Green's The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow builds suspense from the difference between seeing an event and understanding it. The museum's objects, rooms, and spectators all become parts of the puzzle. A useful reading focus is how the detectives convert small inconsistencies into a sequence of actions without accepting the most dramatic explanation too quickly.