I enjoyed the book and found it was an easy read with flowing prose and good characters, that in part possibly because it could be classed as popular fiction of the time (as his friend Dickens work could also have been classed, but I am not suggesting that Wilkie Collins is of the same importance as Dickens). The independent narratives and the many trails in the story added to its interest for me plus the reflections back as reminders of what had come before but were still important.
With respect to the ending I wondered if the story had just got soggy and Collins was not able to generate the drama of a big reveal at the end of the "whodunnit" type or if there was another reason. I have since read his
The Moonstone and the construction is very similar with independent narratives, and there are parallels in the story. For example, both have a detective: the amateur Walter in
The Woman in White and Sergeant Cuff in
The Moonstone (who does not solve the crime) and the main male character being attached to two women. My feeling is that Collins either planned for these stories to have ordinary winding up the story type endings rather than climactic ones or did not ever think of the possibility of having such climactic endings, however I would have thought the former more likely.
I do not read many detective or crime/mystery stories so cannot really comment on where I feel it fits in to the history of those and how new its style was except to take on board that it is so said
. I did wonder if the book could really be classed as important literature but given the claims of its place in the history of mystery and detective literature and the fact that it has survived for around about 150 years (and not really age) I can class it for myself easily as being at least important popular literature.
LATE EDIT:
My feeling is that Collins either never planned for these... corrected by deleting "never" and adapting rest of sentence for meaning to be clear (hopefully
).