Customer Reviews

Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

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A very entertaining bunch of short stories, with a misleading title. Of the dozen stories in this book, only two could possibly be deemed supernatural, and even those two might have more mundane explanations for the events described. Two other stories in this collection might be called action/suspense tales. But the others have nothing to do with terror or the supernatural at all. Rather, they are mysteries, or tales of false identity, or tales of blackmail, or of suspicion. All eminently readable, and all good fun. My favorite story in the book is "Mad Monkton," one of the tales with a more supernatural cast. This longish story takes its time but builds to a very satisfying conclusion. The mystery tales show Collins developing the type of format he would later perfect in "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone." I feel that any fan of Collins would enjoy these varied stories. Just don't go in expecting a really scary time.

Short stories by English author Wilkie Collins. These were all written in the 1800s. Wilkie wrote two classic novels ("The Moonstone" and "Woman in White") which I enjoyed very much. "Moonstone" is a mystery and "Woman..." is a drama with a few Gothic horror touches thrown in. I was looking forward to this book--but was VERY disappointed it. The stories are all well-written but they're somewhat long-winded and (most importantly) not even remotely scary. Most of the times the purportedly scary incidents are of human origin! In some of these various incidents go completely unexplained or the resolutions don't make one bit of sense! I was more bored and frutrated but was supposed to be a horror book. Boring, long-winded and not even remotely scary. You can skip this one.

There were twelve stories here, some interesting, but none horrifying or at all frightful. Frankly this disappointed me, I was hoping to read what would frighten the readers of the mid-nineteenth century but I doubt that any of the stories in this collection would do so and they certainly did not frighten me. I chalked it up to a mistake in the title and proceeded to read the stories simply for entertainment. I found a problem in doing even that, these stories were too out of date for me to enjoy, and most often too simple, almost childish. There has been a great improvement in the telling of tales since these were written, I would not recommend any of them. A caveat, if you must read them, throw out any ideas you have of life as it is, try to imagine a much simpler time with all the inconveniences that implies, life proceeds much slower then than now.