Collins, Wilkie - The Law and the Lady

Somewhere recently on a mystery aficionado site on the Internet (forget which), I encountered favorable mention of a book from 1875 by Wilkie Collins of The Moonstone and The Woman in White fame. Never heard of this title before, but having some remains of an Amazon Xmas gift certificate, I sent off for a used copy. What a pleasant surprise! This is not as great a novel as “The Moonstone” (1869) but it puts down the Eng - Lit Establishment dogma that his books deteriorated after that and are not worth reading. Wrong. (In that case, is Mary Shelley worth investigating for her post Frankenstein's? Maybe Gutenberg is the on - line solution to this, because no book publisher is likely to reprint them.)

“The Law and the Lady” is an eminently readable book, not hard to find even, having been reprinted by Oxford Classics. It was written around the same time as Anna Katherine Greene was pioneering the female detective. Collins's heroine is in effect a detective, probably the first to appear in a novel - length story - her name is Valeria Woodhouse, write that down, mystery fans. She is NOT Kinsey Milhone or Sharon McCone of course. Yet given that the book shows all of the cultural mores of the time (as do all books when you come down to it), including what we now consider snobbery and anti - feminism and stuffy Victorian propriety, human nature in its immutability shines through and drives the story, which is true of any book worth remembering beyond its generation, as this one is. Don't expect Golden Age of Detection standards (GAD), that was 30 years or so in the future.

This is BAD (if I can coin a term - the Bronze Age of Detection - sorry about the acronym), but do expect many of the developed elements of later detective fiction, including multiple suspects/solutions; the obvious solution turns out to be the true one, but I am not giving much away by saying that since it is well obfuscated in the book. There is even a very neat thread involving the forensic recovery and reassembly of a torn - up letter from a trash pile into a readable document that solves the case - if the protagonists choose to do so after all their effort. Ambiguity here? Yes. The doughty, and pregnant, heroine/detective, while having defied her husband, family, and friends by insisting on solving the mystery of why he married her under a false name*, finally finks out. She leaves the decision up to the wimpish husband, who is decidedly less attractive than she is to the reader, probably even to a contemporary one of the time. He, of course, opts to leave the letter, which he doesn't dare to read himself, unpublished in his lifetime to be left in his will to his newborn son. We have read it, of course - don't let the illogic of this book's reputing to be a first - person narration done just after the event upset you.

As usual, in addition to his strong women characters, Collins has some good stolid masculine types (loving if pompous vicar uncle, faithful friend of the family, cautious but honest and curious Scotch lawyer), and a few dubious people, not bad but no better than they should be: Mrs. Beauly, the heroine's perceived rival, comes to mind, a nice little wench I must say. The classic weirdo in this book comes with the Gothic Novel element that developed alongside and within the mystery novel, especially with Collins. Aptly enough, he lives in a decaying old manor house in the midst of a construction site for one of the hideous new London suburbs that spread like a blight in this era, with two strange, ugly, but devoted servants. He is a grotesque, and to my mind, wonderful character called Miserrimus Dexter. He goes well beyond Collins's Count Fosco (but not with as much 'psychological' depth) as a bizarre person. Born with no legs, a face and torso like Shelley's, a peculiar mind - set and manner to say the least, and a hop - frog way of terrorizing people. He rolls around in an early version of the wheelchair like some kind of Dalek - now that I think of it, he IS a Dalek.

Anyway, a very nice read, and worth adding to your collection if you are into pre - GAD. * No 20th C. person would have let this go, although the Victorian Mother - in - Law and the Old Family Friend, note the caps, said 'Forget about it, there's a good reason, and it will just make you unhappy to know - go and have lots of babies'. Had nobody heard of Bluebeard's wife? Yet this has been the basis of so many plots over the years: the innocent little girl told not to 'bother your silly little head' over something and of course doing just that. The world would be a dull place if everybody followed the advice of well - meaning elders who think they know better.

Wyatt James