Early detective novelist Anna Katharine Green was a unique writer in several respects, including the fact that many of the detectives featured in her novels are women. In this mystery, protagonist Constance Sterling takes on the seemingly impossible task of uncovering the true culprits behind the drowning death of a popular well-respected clergyman who is believed to have killed himself. The news is fatal to his fiancée. Why? And why are her two sons behaving in such a sinister manner? The Mill Mystery is a book that can be classified as a sensational novel, as highly spiced as readers of this kind of fiction can desire. Green does an excellent job of giving the readers clues, but not enough clues to make the mystery easily solvable.