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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9781840225334
ISBN: 1840225335
Label: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Manufacturer: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Book Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2006-07-20
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Studio: Wordsworth Editions Ltd

'Have you ever heard of the fascination of terror?' This is a unique collection of strange stories from the cunning pen of Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone. The Star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo coverted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterise and distinguish this powerful tale. The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which include ghosts, corpses that move, family curses and perhaps the most unusual of all, the Devil's spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Uneven Collection Printed on Low Quality Paper, But Inexpensive
Review: This inexpensive Wordsworth edition includes the novella The Haunted Hotel (about 150 pages) and eight short stories involving ghosts, the supernatural, and villainy of one sort or another. Wilkie Collins is remembered primarily for two novels, The Moonstone (1868) and The Woman in White (1859), that markedly influenced the development of the mystery novel.

The Haunted Hotel (1878) offers a fast moving, tight plot that maintains the reader's interest. It is a mystery story, a ghost story, and an early psychological thriller, all melded smoothly together. The story begins in London, but later moves to Venice. The dark, wet waterways and aging palaces provide an ideal setting for a mysterious death and a possibly related disappearance. Suspicion there is, but evidence is sparse. A threatening apparition indirectly hints at further clues.

The psychology component revolves around the Countess Narona, one of the most memorable characters created by Collins. The seemingly amoral Countess foresees, or believes she foresees, her eventual punishment and doom for previous evils. Her obsession leads her step by step toward the very retribution that she hopes to avoid.

The short stories in this Wordsworth edition are unfortunately uneven, and certainly less memorable than The Haunted Hotel. The Dream Woman, Mrs. Zant and the Ghost, and Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman are conventional ghost stories while a sense of evil underlies Nine O'Clock and The Devil's Spectacles. A Terribly Strange Bed is a tale of villainy that reminds me of both Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson. The Dead Hand and Blow up with the Brig! are tales of suspense and dread, although neither is really a ghost story, nor involve supernatural elements.

A Better Choice: Sensation Stories, Tales of Mystery and Suspense, a soft cover edition by Peter Owen Publishers, Great Britain (2004) offers a substantially better sampling of ten short stories by Wilkie Collins. The Dream Woman, A Terribly Strange Bed, Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman, and Nine O'Clock, among the better short stories in the Wordsworth edition, are also found in Sensation Stories. (The Haunted Hotel is available in an inexpensive Dover edition.)

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful Novella.... as for the stories....
Review: The Haunted Hotel novella that begins this collection of tales is quite good. Wilkie Collins is a master of suspense. I didn't want to put the book down. He presents all his characters at first sympathetically and then we are left to wonder what happened in the palazzo in Venice (that is before he gives us more details...) He introduces his Countess character masterfully (although I wish he had included Doctor Wybrow in the rest of the story - I found his character to be quite appealling). If you are a fan of Victorian novels and especially of the mystery genre, this story is worth the price of admission.

As for the remainder of the stories, I was a bit disappointed. Collins knows how to write a novel but I found the stories quite dull and even the extradordinary in them a little "trite". M.R. James, despite his detailed and cumbersome literary approach to the ghost story is more odious, his tales linger in the imagination. James knows how to crafts his settings, present his characters, and mould his macabre world before the darkness arrives. I find Collins not as adept as James in executing the right atmosphere for his stories. He has great ideas but he doesn't make the format in presenting them interesting.

If you like your ghost stories without the "ghostly" you might like this collection of stories. If not, check out the other masters of the gothic. If you like Wilkie Collins and want to experience his shorter works, this is a reasonably priced way to start.

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