Truth is truly stranger than fiction, but when Collins combines them together, it results in The Dead Alive, the forerunner of modern detective fiction. A close friend of Charles Dickens, Collins' novel is based on the sensational turn of the century trial of Jesse and Stephen Boorn in Vermont. In The Dead Alive, a farm manager mysteriously disappears and the Meadowcroft brothers are charged with his murder. But without a body, no one knows what the outcome of their trial will be. Twists and turns abound in The Dead Alive, keeping the reader captivated page after page
The first idea of this little story was suggested to the author by a printed account of a trial which actually took place, early in the present century, in the United States... It may not be amiss to add, for the benefit of incredulous readers, that all the ''improbable events'' in the story are matters of fact, taken from the printed narrative. Anything which ''looks like truth'' is, in nine cases out of ten, the invention of the author.
