夏至已至，蝉鸣枝头，北窗高卧，尽享读书之乐。今天我们将继续为大家推送威尔基·柯林斯的悬疑代表作《白衣女人》。游荡在幽暗树林里的白衣女子到底是谁？她又身负怎样的秘密？让我们跟随作家的娓娓叙说一起去解开这桩英格兰乡野里的离奇谜案吧。

初版序言（节选自《白衣女人》，上海译文出版社，2024年）

写这部小说时，我作了一次试验，据我所知，这种写法以前的小说家从未尝试过。书中的故事，从头到尾，都由书中的人物自己叙述。在一连串事件的发展过程中，这些人物被安排在不同的地位，轮流出面叙述故事，直至结束。

如果用这方法写小说只是为了追求形式上的新颖，那我也就不会在这里烦渎诸位的视听了。事实上，除了形式之外，书的内容也由于采取了这一写法而变得更加完善。这样写法，我就必须使故事不断地向前发展；同时我那些人物，由于应为推动故事的发展作出自己的贡献，因而也就有更多的机会来表现他们自己……

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I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four roads met -- the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the road to Finchley, the road to West End, and the road back to London. I had mechanically turned in this latter direction, and was strolling along the lonely high-road -- idly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look like -- when, in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my shoulder from behind me.

I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the handle of my stick.

There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road -- there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven -- stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.

I was far too seriously startled by the suddenness with which this extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of night and in that lonely place, to ask what she wanted. The strange woman spoke first.

“Is that the road to London?” she said.

本书共31篇文章，是作者在洞察推理类型、主题和叙事技巧的基础上，建立起文学、历史的坐标系，在社会和思想的角度，更深入地理解推理文化的发展源流，助力读者思索推理之于今天生活的意义。既适合推理迷重温名家名作和解谜快感，也能够满足入门推理读者们的好奇心，并由此推开推理之门。

The book presents an analysis of 51 famous protagonists from some of the finest and most enduring works of fiction – predominantly novels – over the past five hundred years. The characters from the novels selected are mainly those critiqued from famous British and American authors, although characters from authors of Canadian, Australian and New Zealander backgrounds are also included. The book casts critical light upon the writers’ works, the characters they have created, and the critics who have read them. It portrays continuities and departures, congruencies and anomalies in the development of the fictional character over the past 500 years, primarily from an Anglo-American perspective.

 

 

文案策划及录音：图书借阅部 李圣昭

编辑：宣传策划小组 宋丙秀