The Dead Secret

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The Dead Secret was Wilkie Collins's first full-length puzzle-romance. Here he broke away from his youthful style to experiment with and refine those techniques of plot construction and surging narrative which he was to employ the next decade in his famous novels. The Dead Secret, as with Collins's later works, centers around a socially and morally questionable event, from which all incidents derive, and towards which all characters inevitably move. The secret, identified with the Cornish mansion Porthgenna, has all but ruined the life of the young servant girl Sarah Leeson; 15 years later it comes back to confuse and haunt Rosamond, the heir to Porthgenna. Collins's talent for eccentric characters is given full scope in the misanthropic hermit Andrew Treverton, his bullying servant Schrowl, and the actress whose powerful will lies behind the secret. The Dead Secret is a relentless quest to uncover a forgotten crime; the heir's detective work must finally lead to a disastrous revelation.