We're near the end. Only a few more chapters to go and it gets more and more exciting. I've been in transit so a little behind in this post but chatting about good books is always worth the wait! Ok so where did we get up to? Oh yes Marian was ill and Fosco had discovered and read her diary, the sneaky bastard.
Of course the next section had me all in a tense as to whether they were going to kill off Marian but I kept telling myself Wilkie wouldn't dare kill such a cool chick and I'd feel better. So then the Count, his doormat wife and Percival start to get all sneaky again and we all knew they were up to something but the way they tricked Laura to leave Blackwater was not at all what I guessed would happen and the evilness that is the Count/Percival pair started to emerge.
And then we find out that Laura has gotten ill and died?! Say what?! I knew that some more sneakiness was going on there, and when Hartright came back on the scene (with everything Marian dreamed about him true) and ran into them at the grave my mind was racing with the possibilities of what happened. That's why I think Collins is such a great story teller, he gives you enough suspense to get super excited and then forces your mind to race over all the possibilities while you read forward trying to decipher the goings on.
So we learn that Laura and Anne did the old switch-a-roo and Laura got landed in the Asylum in place of Anne and Marian finds out and breaks her out (go Marian!) but no-one else believes it's Laura. Don't really blame them though as she has gone all weird. So Hartright swoops in to look after them and to fight for Laura. At least Hartright is finally growing on me thanks to obtaining some balls in Central America. Enough said.
Finally Hartright becomes Mr Detective and starts investigating everything and questioning everyone. So Mrs. Catherick got pregnant and it wasn't her husbands and my mind instantly went to the idea that Laura and Anne were sisters and their dad was Percival which would make their marriage the grossest thing in the world! Ick. But thankfully that idea was killed as quickly as it appeared in my mind. Not something I would want to dwell on.
Anyone else mightily impressed by the interview with Mrs. Catherick? That was a kick ass scene and one I would love to see in a BBC made mini-series of the book. Oh please make that happen.
So the final part is to go and this is the most frustrating part of a great book because you desperately want to finish it but you also don't want it to end! Oh the conundrum.
UPDATE: Turns out I finished a chapter early and everyone else knows The Secret and I don't! Gah! Better read the last chapter before I read anyone else's posts just in case I read a spoiler. Woops.
UPDATE AGAIN (Uber spoiler!): So I read the bit I missed and I know The Secret! Everyone else seems disappointed, like not being Sir isn't that big a deal but I so get why this is a huge issue. It's not losing the baronet title he's worried about, he commited fraud which at one point would have been punishable by death but although now he wouldn't die straight away he would get shipped off to Australia as a convict for ever. I bet in that time getting shipped to the other side of the world which they probably imagined was as wild and dangerous as South America was to Hartright, is enough to freak the crap out of anyone and cause them to hide their secret away. I read a book about the convicts going to Aussie and they travelled on slave ships and heaps of them died in the journey over. I'm just stoked I never guessed it. I hate when I pre-guess things.
