9 h 39 minAudiobook10 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the smallest mark of a name points you toward a killer—or away from one?
In Initials Only, Anna Katharine Green draws you into a crime and the patient effort to name the person behind it. The case depends on small signs, not force. Initials can suggest an identity, but they can also turn attention elsewhere. Your task is to look closely before deciding what those marks mean.
Green builds a puzzle around evidence laid out in plain view. Her clear, formal prose moves at a steady pace, and careful talk carries the weight of action. A crime that seems to have no answer becomes an invitation to think: which details matter, and what can they really prove?
What you’ll discover
- Small signs, real stakes Follow scraps of evidence as the search for a name gives each detail weight.
- Patience before certainty Enjoy detection that asks you to weigh the clues rather than leap toward an answer.
- The pull of initials Consider how a few letters can direct suspicion or draw it away.
- Talk worth following Settle into careful conversations that matter as much as action in the unfolding puzzle.
- A fair reader's challenge Test your own judgment against a mystery whose solution rests on evidence in plain view.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy a clever puzzle with a detective who thinks aloud, a locked-room mystery with old New York streets and hotels, and a quiet duel between a hunter and a suspect who seems too fine to be guilty.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stranger washes his hands in snow
- A death with no weapon
- Gryce reasons from a paper cutter
- The man with two names
- A calm man tells a smooth story
- Sweetwater moves in next door
- The second O. B. in Derby
- Doris, a dream and an unwelcome visitor
- What the story is really about
- How the book is told
Who’s who
- SweetwaterA plain, quick young detective who suspects a charming inventor of two impossible killings and will go undercover beside him to prove it.
- Ebenezar GryceAn aging, rheumatic detective who reasons from small clues and finds new energy when his protégé brings him a hard case.
- Orlando BrothersonA tall, brilliant inventor and speaker who lives a double life and keeps a secret behind a calm face.
- Oswald BrothersonOrlando's gentle younger brother, a mill manager in Derby, who loved Edith Challoner in secret and lies ill without knowing she is dead.
- Doris ScottA beautiful young girl in Derby who nurses Oswald and carries a dread of the day she must tell him the truth.
- Mr. ChallonerA grieving father who refuses to believe his daughter took her own life and will pay any price to clear her name.
- Laura AndersonThe first narrator, a curious wife who sees a strange act in the snow and cannot let it go.
- Edith ChallonerA rich, admired young woman whose sudden death in a hotel writing room begins the mystery and who left letters she never sent.
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- Large-print eBook
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- Audiobook
- 9 h 39 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 10 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Initiales seulement
by Anna Katharine Green · 1911
A woman falls dead in a crowded hotel, and a tall stranger washes his hands in the snow outside.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Initials Only is a detective novel by Anna Katharine Green, set in New York and a Pennsylvania mill town in the early years of the twentieth century. It begins with a puzzle that seems to have no answer: a rich and admired young woman falls dead in a crowded hotel, and no one can say who struck her or how.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stranger washes his hands in snow
The story opens on a bitterly cold night on Broadway. Laura and her husband George Anderson are on their way to visit a friend when a passerby remarks on a remarkable man. They notice a tall, handsome gentleman in a fur-trimmed coat hurry out of the Clermont Hotel and round a corner.
Then they see him bend to the curb and scrub his hands in the snow, quickly and with strange energy. George does not like it. Before he can follow the man, a commotion breaks out in front of the hotel.
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What is Initials Only about?
It is a detective novel about the sudden death of a wealthy young woman in a New York hotel. Two detectives follow love letters signed only with initials and find a trail that leads from Broadway to a Brooklyn tenement and a mill town in Pennsylvania.
Who are the two O. B.s in Initials Only?
They are two brothers, Orlando and Oswald Brotherson. Both wrote letters to Edith Challoner signed with only their initials, and the similar handwriting at first makes the police think one man wrote them all. Sorting out which brother wrote which is a key part of the mystery.
Who is Sweetwater in Initials Only?
Sweetwater is a young police detective, plain-faced and quick, trained by the older Mr. Gryce. He sees the likeness between two killings, goes undercover as a carpenter, and tracks his suspect to Pennsylvania, where he meets Doris Scott.
The author
Anna Katharine Green
1846–1935 · American detective novelist
Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist born in Brooklyn, New York. She wrote detective fiction, including The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878, and That Affair Next Door, published in 1897. She married actor and furniture designer Charles Rohlfs in 1884. She lived in Buffalo, New York, where she died.
More by Anna Katharine Green
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