In middle-class dining rooms everywhere, discussion turned to the intriguing cast of characters Mr Collins had invented – mannish, eloquent Marian Halcombe; faithful and angelic Laura Fairlie; sinister, secretive Percival Glyde; and of course Count Fosco, seductive and cunning, with his cockatoo, his canary-birds, and his white mice running over his immense body.
And the world has yet to hear from anyone who has spent time in facilities like Dabancheng, the sinister and secretive facility of such immense proportions.
The first mission begins simply enough: Infiltrate the headquarters of the secretive, sinister dataDyne company and rescue a doctor being held hostage.
For over 50 years he played a backroom part in the politics, business and cultural life of California, and often his influence extended well beyond the golden state.Not that Mr Coblentz was at all sinister, or even secretive.
The annual assembly that brings together politicians, business leaders, media moguls, top academics and even royalty is a favorite target of conspiracy theorists for whom secretive equals sinister.
All of this may prove persuasive to many of those already opposed to the nation's high level of military spending or prone to see sinister motives behind the secretive conduct of its diplomacy and intelligence.
Who could condone secretive, even sinister-sounding, organizations?
After Charlotte speaks Korean in "Something Nice Back Home", James Poniewozik from Time became curious about her past because she is "the member of the four freighties whom we know the least about, and the most secretive and sinister-seeming of the bunch".
Wikipedia and others, including the New York Times, have suggested that Hell.com is the front-end for a secretive global group of unknown but clearly sinister purpose.
Many accuse the ECB of being secretive, opaque, even (says one group of American academics), "sinister".
As they joust with authorial research - about the divine proportion in nature and the possibility that the Mona Lisa is a painting of Leonardo himself in drag - a thug from the secretive Catholic organisation Opus Dei, under orders from a sinister bishop, is also trying to understand the meaning of the imaginative corpse in the museum.
