The Dead Letter and The Figure EightBefore Raymond Chandler, before Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie, there was Metta Fuller Victor, the first American authorman or womanof a full length detective novel. This novel, The Dead Letter, is presented here along with another of Victors mysteries, The Figure Eight. Both written in the 1860s and published under the name Seeley Regester, these novels show howby combining conventions of the mystery form first developed by Edgar Allan Poe with