ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the similarities between The Moonstone and The Nine Tailors and shows how Dorothy L. Sayers uses strategies similar to Wilkie Collins's both for handling the details that help create the detective puzzle and for moving beyond this puzzle through the significance of a frame story. What is particularly interesting about this comparison is the fact that Collins's strategies, which later become conventional tactics for other writers of detective fiction, work well in their original incarnation to undermine the very closure that came to characterize the genre. The chapter investigates the similarities between Bleak House and The Nine Tailors to see how Sayers's tactics for imbuing the details in her novel with significance and sensation echo Charles Dickens's as they both center their stories in reality while also gesturing beyond this reality to the supernatural. The Moonstone provides Sayers with a powerful model as she works within the conventions of this genre but also strives to transcend them.
