Recently I read two 19th century English novels that meld the genres of domestic drama and mystery rather nicely. Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) was a delightful surprise. If you read the back cover, you will be told that it is a mystery about a cursed diamond (those of us who've spent too much time perusing New Age jewelry on ebay--anybody here own an Evenstar pendant?--will be confused at first) that is inherited by a beautiful headstrong girl, stolen under mysterious circumstances, and stalked by three predictably exotic/scary Asians, causing a lot of family problems and death and chest-beating. However, if you actually read it, you'll see that the book's true merit is as a collection of narratives by very amusing Victorian characters who are mostly incidental to the plot: the coddled family butler (the strongest section); a religious zealot spinster cousin (the section in which she sneaks around the house planting missionary pamphlets near the tub and in the sewing boxes is hilarious); a city detective who's more interested in roses than in the case; and a poor country doctor who is universally hated for no better reason than that he's got mysterious two-toned hair. SPOILER: If you want to read a satisfying mystery plot, don't pick this up. Although Collins does a nice job of wrapping up a lot of details that look like they'll be loose ends, and I was absolutely hooked for the three days it took me to finish it, the solution to the case was plain silly. At first I was angry. Then I forgot about the plot and just concentrated on my enjoyment of the characters, who will remind you of Dickens's. If you like Dickens, or are interested in Victorian fiction, or just want a fun, funny light read, then I definitely recommend it. If you're a mystery buff, probably not.

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (revised 1803, published posthumously in 1818) has an overstated reputation as 1. a gothic novel, or 2. a spoof of gothic novels. The heroine, Catherine Morland, who is inauspiciously unpretty, unsmart, and unromantic, loves a good Radcliffe novel, and, when she is invited to stay at an abbey, becomes convinced that her host has locked up his wife in a wing of the house. Northanger Abbey is an early Austen novel, and at first, she dwells too heavily on the parody. She was more interested in stating what her novel was not (not romantic, not melancholy), and contrasting her characters' behavior with that in gothic novels, than in actually developing plot or characters of her own. Once past the first hundred pages, though, the novel picks up and shows all the things that Austen is justly famous for: savage characterization of the stupid, selfish and cruel; a dim view of the human capacity for goodness; a delight in embarrassing her heroines; and really terrible, shattering realizations about one's own bad behavior. I recommend this one only to Austen completists. A side note that doesn't really belong in this paragraph: I believe that the scene in Foucault's Pendulum where Lia explains the conspiracy as a laundry list might be a tribute to a scene in Northanger, in which Catherine finds a mysterious frightening document that turns out to be indeed a laundry list.

Now that I have finally read all six of Austen's major novels (Lady Susan's hanging out in my to-read pile), I can state that everything I said about Mansfield Park in my 11/10/04 review was correct, and I can now rank them: Emma (best), P&P (most beloved), Mansfield Park, S&S, Persuasion, Northanger.