The Woman in the Alcove

A society woman wearing a famous diamond is stabbed in an alcove at a New York ball, and the man everyone suspects is the one the narrator loves — who will not defend himself. Green published The Leavenworth Case in 1878, nine years before Sherlock Holmes, and is called the mother of the detective novel; here the narrator is the accused's fiancée, and she does the detecting because nobody else will. Sixty plates by painters including William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam catch the city's gaslight and weather, from Washington Arch in spring to a New York blizzard, matching the novel's wintry Manhattan mystery.