I’m not going to do an in depth review of this book, I’m just going to make a few observations. It’s a fairly hefty tome at 627 pages, this is partly because it was originally printed in a weekly magazine and I suppose the editor wanted so many words each week to fill the allotted space for it. You can down-load it in instalments if you want to go for the authentic Victorian experience and I think I might have preferred that, then you get the cliff-hangers which Collins wrote for the end of each piece. Also, I imagine that if you are waiting a week for the next instalment then you are bound to think about it more and try to guess which turn the story is going to take.

I did think whilst reading it that the Count Fosco – Sir Percival relationship was what the Victorians would have deemed to be ‘unnatural’. There was the constant repetition that Count Fosco had a strange power over Sir Percival and in my Penguin edition on page 214, Marian describes Sir Percival as having a mania for order and he is upset even by flower-blossoms which have fallen on the carpet.

I think that Victorian readers would have seen such behaviour as ‘womanish’ and definitely suspect in a man. Coupled with Count Fosco’s flamboyant clothes and Sir Percival’s assertion that there was no chance that Laura would be having any children, it does seem to add up to me, but nobody else seems to have noticed it so I might be going off at a mad tangent with that thought. However I see from the introduction which I have just read – I always keep that for last – that Oscar Wilde was given the nickname of Fosco when he was a student.

So, it’s very wordy with masses of description and doesn’t really have much in the way of humour in it. Mrs. Catherick is a tragic/comic figure in her determination to appear to be respectable, but I did enjoy reading it although I probably wouldn’t read it again.

I reviewed this book as part of the Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge.