The Trail of the Serpent is the debut novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, first published in 1860 as Three Times Dead; or, The Secret of the Heath. The story concerns the schemes of the orphan Jabez North to acquire an aristocratic fortune, and the efforts of Richard Marwood, aided by his friends, to prove his innocence in the murder of his uncle. Portraying many themes associated with the sensation novel - including violence, potential bigamy and the lunatic asylum - it has also been hailed as the first British detective novel; plot devices and elements such as the detective's use of boy assistants, the planting of evidence on a corpse, and the use of disguise to fool the criminal, were later used by this school of fiction in the twentieth century. Initially selling poorly, Braddon condensed and revised Three Times Dead on the advice of the London publisher John Maxwell; re-issued under its current title, the novel achieved greater success - it was serialized in 1864 and then reprinted several times in the following years....... Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 - 4 February 1915) was an English popular novelist of the Victorian era.She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret.Born in London, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was privately educated. Her mother Fanny separated from her father Henry in 1840, when Mary was five. When Mary was ten years old, her brother Edward Braddon left for India and later Australia, where he became Premier of Tasmania. Mary worked as an actress for three years in order to support herself and her mother. In 1860, Mary met John Maxwell (1824-1895), a publisher of periodicals. She started living with him in 1861.However, Maxwell was already married with five children, and his wife was living in an asylum in Ireland. Mary acted as stepmother to his children until 1874, when Maxwell's wife died and they were able to get married. She had six children by him, including the novelist William Babington Maxwell. Braddon was a prolific writer, producing more than 80 novels with inventive plots. The most famous is Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition, and a fortune as a bestseller.It has remained in print since its publication and been dramatised and filmed several times. R. D. Blackmore's anonymous sensation novel Clara Vaughan (1864) was wrongly attributed to her by some critics. Braddon wrote several works of supernatural fiction, including the pact with the devil story Gerald, or the World, the