Armadale - 4. Band

The novel that invented the detective genre. Two men share one name, Allan Armadale, and the consequences prove deadly. When one father is murdered by his namesake, the curse of the shared name passes to their sons: distant cousins destined to meet at a grand English estate, unaware of the blood legacy that binds them. Wilkie Collins builds his masterpiece with the meticulous plotting that would influence Doyle, Christie, and every suspense writer who followed. The settings shift from the murky waters of a Norfolk coast to the genteel boredom of a Yorkshire manor, from a German spa town to the dark corners of Victorian London. What begins as a meditation on identity, how a name can become a destiny, unfolds into a thriller where nothing is as it seems and everyone has something to hide. Collins understood something essential: the most dangerous secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves. This is where modern crime fiction begins.