A woman is stabbed in the palm court of a New York hotel with a room full of witnesses, and nobody saw it happen; the only clue is a set of initials. Green published The Leavenworth Case in 1878, nine years before Sherlock Holmes, and is called the mother of the detective novel; here, late in her career, she brings back her old detective Ebenezer Gryce and his assistant Caleb Sweetwater. Sixty plates of New York streets and interiors by John Sloan and William Merritt Chase, 1795 to 1928, give the city that hides the crime its own face.
