Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White is an early detective fiction. Walter Hartright's midngiht encounter with the woman in white draws him into kidnapping, intrigue and murder. The epistolary novel draws the reader in as you see everything unfolding from many view points. "Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness—with the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word."
