There have been many claims as to who created the first mystery novel or work of detective fiction, but Wilkie Collins’ “sensation novel” The Woman in White is definitely a strong early claimant to that title. 

Besides an often-chilling mystery, this classic from 1859 is also an impassioned plea for justice in Victorian marriage laws which, at the time, were vastly unequal to women, a theme which plays a central role in the novel’s spine-tingling mystery. Collins wrote plenty of other mysterious and sometimes ghostly tales, but this is his most famous.