The Evil Genius

Wilkie Collins is best known for his great mystery The Moonstone and The Woman in White—and for a life as sensational as are those novels. (The writer who famously advised other novelists to ‘make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait’ is now known to have kept entire households in different parts of England going simultaneously.) Yet Collins also wrote a succession of extraordinarily powerful novels of private life; of these The Evil Genius is among the finest.

The story is motivated by ...