As my first foray into the realm of Wilkie Collins, I must say that I was a bit underwhelmed. I think I had just heard too much about how Collins and Dickens were the authors of the 19th century and I expected Collins' most famous book to rival Dickens at his best. It doesn't.
That being said, it's miles ahead of the bad Dickens, so I shouldn't complain too loudly.
Collins, in this book, is borrowing from the tradition of the epistolary novel in creating disparate narratives that are, ostensibly, written as retrospect by their tellers and he does a good job with it. The story itself is quite fun to follow through all the twists and turns and, as is usual, the banality of the main couple is more than made up for by the eccentricities of the villain and supporting cast.
A good story and well told. Collins is, in many ways, the father of the detective story as we think of it.