These 'Secret journals' by Wilkie Collins are incredible. They provide insight into the lives of Dickens and Collins that is not covered in any of the numerous biographies on the two Victorian authors. But, maybe more importantly, they show a side of Victorian society that we rarely get to see. The true character of the Victorian underworld and the beginnings of the art of detection, which is obviously, still a major fascination in our society. These are a must read!!! ( )

could be spoilers. I haven't Wilkie Collins so I don't know if he gets the style right, he probably does. The sex stuff was a little strange. The narrator was so obsessive about some things (like his dislike of Rogers), and so dumb about others. It got irritating as it dragged along, and the action scenes were unlikely, and Tally Ho Thompson was very unlikely, but that could be 100% Collins. The thing that bugged me the most was how unlikely it was; particularly the part where Collins & Dickens just cheerfully bounce along into all the police activities. Wouldn't they at least have worried about being noticed? And gathering mean enemies?

Certainly for more sexually explicit than one would imagine a book set in that time period, it is a cracking good story with many real people and events thrown in for good measure.

Palmer does tend to liberally use sensationalism for its own sake, and not to move the story along. My guess is that he wanted to illustrate that sexual depravity wasn't anything new. That even supposed upper class people were just as apt to be involved in perversion as anyone else.

Palmer's characters, as depicted in the book, were interesting and the use of the First Person narrative makes it seem like we are actually witnessing the same events as Wilkie, the teller of the tale.

Worth a read, whether you are a fan of Dickens or not. ( )

Well, this book looked as if it could be fun and interesting, but in fact, it was just smutty. I didn't finish it. Besides, the author's use of words was not apt. He stretched their meaning too far. It was annoying.

A secret diary of Wilkie Collins about his early days with Charles Dickens in London, this novel was smart about the era with its characters, and even managed to introduce Dickens' late life love, Ellen Ternan, in mysterious circumstances. The subtitle about the Macbeth murders is terribly misleading, as the play and its characters are non-entities in the plot. I did find Palmer's dialect writing annoying and sometimes distracting to the plot. As a scholar in the era, I'm sure he was correct, but an occasional "cheat" for readers would have helped the story move along. This story did make innovative use of a real-life man who is often abused by other writers, and I found the mystery satisfying. ( )