What do You think about The Detective And Mr. Dickens (1992)?
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.[return][return]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.[return][return]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.[return][return]Worth a read, whether you are a fan of Dickens or not.
—Mark Stratton
Started out strong, ended up irritating. The basic premise of a "lost memoir" of Wilkie Collins recounting how he and Charles Dickens wound up helping the police with a murder investigation was good, along with the research into Dickens's and Collins's lives and London of that time. After a bit, though, the characters become too self-consciously flawed and the memoir becomes too "modern," with "Collins" repeatedly emphasizing how what he is writing can be graphic because it won't be printed until, roughly, this book came out (1990). The author makes a good point on how even Dickens had to not make the seedier side of life too explicit in his writing so that his books could be published, but he then goes overboard with the nudity and cussing, complete with a gratuitous catfight between prostitutes. The author also gets lazy when, using a new term randomly, it'll then pop up again and again soon after. On another note, he had one of the dates of the chapters as April 31 (??? - was there a different calendar then?). Bottom line: in most cases, Dickens was right - less is more.
—Jen
