Customer Reviews

The Haunted Hotel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reading a novel by Wilkie Collins requires substantial time, but my investment is usually well rewarded. His lesser known novel, The Haunted Hotel, is uncharacteristically short, and is an easy way to become acquainted with Wilkie Collins. The Haunted Hotel 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 the modern Venice of 1860. 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 Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice was first published in 1879. I recommend buying the inexpensive Dover edition (ISBN 0486243338). Dover also reprints other books by Wilkie Collins, including The Moonstone, The Lady in White, The Dead Secret, Basil, No Name, and others. Through these works Wilkie Collins is credited with having popularized the classic detective mystery story.

If you are a Wilkie Collins fan, well then, add this title to your list. I have. A story filled with suspenses and mystery. It keeps you turning the pages until the end. Who killed the count or did anyone? What happened to the courier? Is the countess mad? Told partly by letters and differing characters' perspective it is typical of Collins' narrative style. He takes the readers to a most stupendous climax in Venice. It is a ghost story, a fun read, like watching an old black and white movie. Recommeded!

Wilkie Collins, who wrote such landmark (and lengthy) mysteries as "The Moonstone" and "The Woman in White," has a very short effort, too. "The Haunted Hotel" is that effort. As mysteries go, this one is rather understated, though one must make allowances for the fact that it was written in 1878, long before Christie, Carr, and others gave the genre a more definite shape. (One must also make allowances for the sexism contained in the book lest one hurl the book at the nearest wall, window, or other suitable repository.)

The story begins when a man and woman become engaged. Sadly, though, he was already engaged. His first fiancee very graciously bows out, and the man marries his second fiancee. They head to Venice, where their stay in a castle is marked by mystery. A maid quits. A porter then disappears without a trace. Finally, the man dies. All of these events lead toward a series of coincidences that draws the many characters together for a final revelation.

The story, though, is more a melodrama than a mystery. Indeed, the mystery is subverted for much of the story as the characters' lives overlap, collide, and generally run into each other. It is easy, amid this seeming chaos, to lose sight of the second fiancee, a fascinating character who is so dominated by her sense of fate and supernatural vengeance that she causes events for which she later blames Fate. Unfortunately, she is the most interesting character and is absent from too much of the story. She alone seems to break free of the rather confining roles imposed on the others by the times and the culture. In a longer book, her absences might be a source of great consternation, but the reader who pushes through the first 80 or so pages will be well rewarded in the last 50, where she reclaims center stage and where the mystery also comes to the fore.

The book's real strength lies in the character of the villainess/ victim Countess. As in Armadale, Collins creates a female character capable of enormous evil,and at the same time so riddled with guilt,and so seemingly trapped by her destiny, that we feel a horrified sympathy for her from the off.

None of the rest of the book's characters really come up to the same level, but the plotting as always is excellent, and the variation on the 'substitution' device in 'Woman' marks another first in crime fiction, which has been ripped off ad infinitum. The ending is truly chilling; if the hero(s) and heroine had had a bit more blood in them, this would rank with the very best.

When I purchased this book I was hoping for a "detective" novel, as Wilkie Collins is considered the father of the English detective novel. His novel "The Moonstone" is his most famous for this reason. However, the storyline to "The Haunted Hotel" sounded more interesting to me than "The Moonstone" so I bought it instead.

If you're hoping to read a detective novel, don't buy this. There isn't an ounce of detection, logic or even an understanding of human nature in this work. Nor is there any significant character development of any kind. On the other hand, if you like Gothic literature and don't care a jot about character development, buy the novel and godspeed. This IS a page turner, but almost everything about this novel is so predictably facile that it almost doesn't bear reading.

My advice is that if you want something serious, steer clear of this one. If you need a brain candy alternative to TV, this is probably a good bet.

...This little volume contains enough suspense, fog, and familial twists-and-turns to satisfy any modern mystery fan (if one overlooks the inherent sexism that dates this book)...not to mention the delicious sense of voyeurism in peeking in on this group of gentle Englishfolk. Read it and remember when mystery writers could actually write.

This novel was originally published in 1879, and is still readable today. It does have a nice plot twist, but suffers, as much writiing of that period does, from little sense of urgency. Life was more slowly paced and people had more time to smell the roses.
To my thinking, 130 years after the author wrote it, the transitions are somewhat clumsy, and there could be a lot more drama in the story. But allowance has to be given for the era in which it was written. In those days women were delicate flowers, although the Countess is memorable as an exception to the mold.
I was surprised that there was so little detail of Venice where much of the story takes place. In fact the subtitle is "A Mystery Of Modern Venice."
If you collect antiques, this might delight you. For the rest of us, it is a worthy reminder of whence the murder mystery derived.

When I first came across The Haunted Hotel, I figured the main theme of the book would be a hotel with a few ghosts roaming down the halls. There IS a ghost in this book, but the ghost takes a back seat to the mystery behind the life and death of a man named Lord Montbarry.

Lord Montbarry was engaged to marry a lovely young lady named Agnes Lockwood. His family found her pleasing and quite approved of the match. Suddenly, Montbarry terminated the engagement and married a woman of questionable reputation, Countess Narona. Although heart broken, Agnes remained brave while the newlyweds honeymooned in Venice.

The novel really begins to take off when Agnes receives a desperate plea from a woman she once knew to allow her to use her name as a reference for her husband, who wishes to apply for a job as a courier in the service of Lord Montbarry! Agnes finds the request offensive but agrees under strict rules.

Later, Agnes receives another frantic visit from the woman. Lord Montbarry's new courier has gone missing. No one associated with him have a clue what happened to him. Lady Montbarry herself states the courier vanished into thin air. The next time the woman visits Agnes, she is convinced her husband is dead. She received a letter from Lord Montbarry's deathbed which contains one thousand pounds.

The novel is dark and creepy, especially Lady Montbarry with her wild black eyes and her strange prophecies of "the end". When Agnes and Lord Montbarry's family travel to Venice and stay at the infamous haunted hotel, where Lord Montbarry once lived, the mystery behind the courier and Montbarry finally fall into place. Definitely WC's most creepy novel!

This classic ghost story is part mystery and part psychological/character study. The point of view in the story jumps from character to character as the complex plot unfolds. Modern readers may be a little put off by the way characters in the story seem a little condescending towards the women involved, but that's really the only criticism that I have of the book.

The story begins with the enigmatic Countess Narona seeking a doctor's opinion in London upon whether or not she is losing her sanity. The doctor says that he can find nothing wrong with her, but the Countess is rather disturbed in her mind over her impending marriage to Lord Montbarry. At the time she became engaged to him, she was unaware that he had already been engaged to another woman, a cousin of his. Although he and the cousin have more or less amicably broken off their engagement, the Countess still feels guilty about her engagement to this man, particularly when she has a chance encounter with his former fiance, Agnes. Agnes seems like such a sweet, likeable girl that the Countess says that she makes her feel her own wickedness, and now she has a horrible sense of impending doom that will be brought down on her by Agnes in punishment for her sins.

In spite of her misgivings and the disapproval of Lord Montbarry's family, who think that she is merely a fortune-hunter, she proceeds with her marriage, and she and her new husband leave the country in the company of the Countess's brother, Baron Rivar. Later, word reaches the family that Lord Montbarry has died of bronchitis in Venice. His widow, the Countess, receives a regular allowance as part of his will and a good amount of money from his life insurance. The Lord's title and most of his estate pass to one of his younger brothers, and the family hopes that they will never hear from the Countess again. However, much as the Countess herself is anxious to avoid them, particularly Agnes, circumstances and the Countess's own premonitions (or, perhaps, sense of guilt) bring them all together again in Venice, at the scene of Lord Montbarry's death. All is not as it first appears, and both the dead and the living will not rest easy until the truth is known.

The fine art of writing a good mystery is to so intrigue the reader that, ponderings of the plot and characters lingering in the mind, draw him/her continually to the story with a hunger for the conclusion that exeeds any other diversion. Such was my experience with this story. Having read The Moonstone and Woman in White by the same author, I expected a quality read. I was not disappointed. A sense of impending doom amid Victorian gothic ambience is painted in the first pages when we are introduced to the Countess Narona, an enigmatic beauty with a soul possessed of a magnetic enchantment and an inner terror that draws the reader immediately into the haunting dark destiny she seeks so desperately to escape. The unfolding of the end at the hotel in "modern" Venice THE HAUNTED HOTEL A MYSTERY OF MODERN VENICEis chilling.