Initials Only

A young woman finds herself entangled in a web of secrets, initials carved into a windowsill, and a mystery that stretches back years. When she arrives at a family estate to serve as a companion, she uncovers evidence of a crime buried beneath silence and respectable surfaces. The local detective is shrewd but distracted by his own suspicions, and as she digs deeper into the initials and the family's hidden affairs, she realizes the danger is closer than she imagined. Green builds her puzzle with meticulous precision, every clue feeling both inevitable and startling. The novel operates on two levels: it's a satisfying puzzle box for the reader to solve alongside the detective, but it's also a sharp examination of how easily the respectable can conceal the monstrous. Green's legal training gives the proceedings an uncanny accuracy, and her prose carries the atmospheric dread of Victorian gothic fiction. This is detective fiction at its earliest and most inventive, a genre Green helped invent and define.