In one story, "A Terribly Strange Bed," a Vidocq tale is re-told in which a lodging house is reputed to be a 'murder inn.' A lodger tries to find out how this happens, and lying awake one night from restlessness (and the wrong dose of a narcotic), he sees the canopy of the bed descending silently to suffocate the sleeper. He escapes, and helps a conveniently-placed cop arrest the bad guys. Thus, Collins' first 'detective' story is told from the point-of-view of the (near) victim, with mounting terror and suspense, not unlike Poe's horror stories.
Collins' second detective story is "The Stolen Letter" which sounds like?? Yup, Poe's "Purloined Letter." A rich young man who is being blackmailed by a compromising letter on the eve of his wedding hires a lawyer (the narrator) who recovers the letter and replaces it with another to postpone the blackmailer's discovery of his loss, and to insult him. The letter is cleverly hidden, though not out in the open as in Poe's story.
Collins' real skill was in long, complex novels, some of which had detective themes. They involve favorite Victorian subjects of rival brothers and sisters, relatives presumed dead but who show up later, relatives drugged and put into insane asylums against their will, detectives helping to establish the legal identities of those presumed dead or exposing false doubles, last minute rescues, and of course, terrible consequences for the villains.
Crowds of people waited outside stores to buy the magazines containing the latest installment of Collins' work, and possible solutions were discussed at work and over dinner. Bets were made.
In "The Woman in White" (1860), a plot of detection is set against a gothic background of romance and horror. The novel consists of reports by witnesses to a case, drawn from Mejan's "Recuiel des Causes Celebres" ("A Collection of Famous Cases"), a book he picked up on a trip to Paris with Dickens. The importance of the novel is in the way it investigates criminal and family mysteries in detail right up to a conclusion of the case in which everything is explained. The villain emerges not a true gentleman but an illegitimate son of a noble family, which further exposes other family secrets, and he dies in a church fire just as he is about to destroy an old birth register. This act of God's justice, combined with the detective's logical solution of the riddles, satisfied Victorian values of reason and moral order.
Collins' most famous novel, "The Moonstone" (1868), first serialized in Dickens' magazine 'All the Year Round,' is arguably the first true detective novel. Dorothy Sayers praised it, saying, "Taking everything into consideration, 'The Moonstone' is probably the finest detective story ever written." In the book, readers know all the facts from the start, narrated in parts by the plot's protagonists in turn. Each character gives a separate account from his or her point of view. The reader must be attentive and decide what the facts are, and whether anyone is embellishing or withholding the truth.
In the novel, Collins introduces a police detective, Sgt. Cuff. Cuff is based on Inspector Whicher of Scotland Yard, who Dickens had also written about. Whicher's career had taken a dive in 1860 when his evidence in a murder case was rejected by a court. But 5 years later, in 1865, a confession vindicated his deductions. He was suddenly a celebrity. When 'The Moonstone' appeared in 1868, everyone recognized Whicher in Sgt. Cuff. Like Inspector Bucket, Cuff takes calm control of situations, interviews people in turn, and examines places carefully. He is an older man, gray and hatchet-faced, and he looks a bit like a stereotypical undertaker. Collins gives him a sense of humor and the charming hobby of growing roses.
Other features in the novel continued in the genre: the country house by the sea, red herrings (misleading clues), and lots, I mean lots, of dialog as part of the investigation. Nearly all detective novels since have been 'talky.' Mine surely are.
Above all those features, however, is the devising of the plot as a game between reader and writer. Different characters relate various episodes in turn, and some of them, of course, lie and mislead. But all the clues are there, and this convention of 'fair play' -- inviting the reader to guess the puzzle and providing the means to do so -- carried well into the next century.
Collins had already experimented with a story told through the eyes of several characters. Ten years earlier, his story "Who Is The Thief?" appeared in 'The Atlantic Monthly' (and as 'The Biter Bit' in 'Queen of Hearts' magazine). The story consists of a series of letters between Inspector Theakstone, Sgt. Bulmer, and a cocky novice named Matthew Sharpin (who is dull-witted and not 'sharp' at all). Collins used humor, false clues, and a 'most unlikely suspect' formula which would become common later.
Collins tried other detectives, including an elderly man fond of pipes, smoking jackets and French novels. But Sgt. Cuff (along with Bucket) form the prototype for the English police detective. They are sound, dependable, loyal, hard-working middle class men who pay attention to detail and who are persistent. They have good home lives, pursue hobbies, and are like-able.
In other words, they identify with, idealize, and affirm the values and beliefs of the readers, the English middle class. They offered comfort and assurance for those who had the most to lose by any disturbance of the established social order. In the later Victorian period, public sympathy (that is, middle class sympathy), turned to support the police, since the middle class needed them -- men like themselves-- to protect them personally and to preserve the class structure and social order of Victorian society.
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