Publisher's Synopsis
A story about a mysterious oriental figure who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting, Marsh's novel is of a piece with other sensational turn-of-the-century fictions such as Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used in many late nineteenth-century novels (those of Wilkie Collins and Stoker, for example) to create suspense Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldmann. First Page: THE BEETLE: A MYSTERY BY RICHARD MARSH WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN WILLIAMSON CONTENTS BOOK I The House with the Open Window CHAPTER I, OUTSIDE CHAPTER II, INSIDE CHAPTER III, THE MAN IN THE BED CHAPTER IV, A LONELY VIGIL CHAPTER V, AN INSTRUCTION TO COMMIT BURGLARY CHAPTER VI, A SINGULAR FELONY CHAPTER VII, THE GREAT PAUL LESSINGHAM CHAPTER VIII, THE MAN IN THE STREET CHAPTER IX, THE CONTENTS OF THE PACKET BOOK II The Haunted Man CHAPTER X, REJECTED CHAPTER XI, A MIDNIGHT EPISODE CHAPTER XII, A MORNING VISITOR CHAPTER XIII, THE PICTURE CHAPTER XIV, THE DUCHESS' BALL CHAPTER XV, MR LESSINGHAM SPEAKS CHAPTER XVI, ATHERTON'S MAGIC VAPOUR CHAPTER XVII, MAGIC? OR MIRACLE? CHAPTER XVIII, THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE BEETLE CHAPTER XIX, THE LADY RAGES CHAPTER XX, A HEAVY FATHER CHAPTER XXI, THE TERROR IN THE NIGHT CHAPTER XXII, THE HAUNTED MAN BOOK III The Terror By Night and the Terror by Day CHAPTER XXIII, THE WAY HE TOLD HER
