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 gives the work to Violet Strange, a society girl who detects for money her family knows nothing about.