M E Braddon

The Trail of the Serpent M E Braddon

The Trail of the Serpent is the debut novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, first published in 1860 as Three Times Dead; or, The Secret of the Heath. The story concerns the schemes of the orphan Jabez North to acquire an aristocratic fortune, and the efforts of Richard Marwood, aided by his friends, to prove his innocence in the murder of his uncle. A typical sensation novel - containing violence, potential bigamy and the lunatic asylum, among other characteristic elements - it has also been hailed as the first British detective novel; many plot devices and elements such as the detective's use of boy assistants, the planting of evidence on a corpse, and the use of disguise to fool the criminal, were later used by this school of fiction in the twentieth century. Initially selling poorly, Braddon condensed and revised Three Times Dead on the advice of the London publisher John Maxwell; re-issued under its current title, the novel achieved greater success - it was serialized in 1864 and then reprinted several times in the following years