The Beetle by Richard Marsh.
Book One: The House with the Open Window
This is a little known gem, published in 1897, the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Beetle outsold it in the first year. It went through 15 printings by 1913.
The narrative is related by four different characters, and is divided into four parts.
Part One is narrated by Robert Holt, an unemployed clerk, and opens on a rainy night as he tries to get shelter at the workhouse in Hammersmith.
It is part horror, part romance, part mystery, part melodrama and it is without doubt highly original. Richard Marsh was a prolific writer and little is known about him: apparently he went to Eton. The Beetle is undoubtedly his masterpiece. It's been unjustly neglected. Let me know what you think.
There's a feisty female character, a private detective (!), the skeletal Robert Holt, a lovelorn scientist and a government minister with a guilty past. Not to mention, The Beetle, a monstrous creation, 'born of neither God nor man', a shape-shifter bent on revenge.
I love it.
It is read by me, Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio.
More Conan Doyle coming soon.
©Magpie Audio 2020
12 июл 2024
