V is for Venice

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins has been on my shelf for a while so I thought it was time to dust it off and give it a read. It is a typical Victorian mystery and needs to be read in context. Perhaps to modern tastes it may be a bit stilted and to my mind the middle part is over long and adds little to the story. On the other hand, if you can persevere, the story itself is good and the ending makes up for some of its shortfalls. It isn't Collins' best work, The Woman in White I feel is a much better book, yet it does deal with many of the themes of today's mysteries; jealousy, madness, and is very atmospheric in the final chapters as you can feel the evil almost seep in from the canals of Venice.



Is there no explanation of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel? Is The Haunted Hotel the tale of a haunting -- or the tale of a crime? The ghost of Lord Montberry haunts the Palace Hotel in Venice --- or does it? Montberry's beautiful-yet-terrifying wife, the Countess Narona, and her erstwhile brother are the center of the terror that fills the Palace Hotel. Are their malefactions at the root of the haunting -- or is there something darker, something much more unknowable at work? 

A close friend of Charles Dickens from their meeting in March 1851 until Dickens' death in June 1870, William Wilkie Collins was one of the best known, best loved, and, for a time, best paid of Victorian fiction writers. But after his death, his reputation declined as Dickens' bloomed. 

Now, Collins is being given more critical and popular attention than he has received for 50 years. Most of his books are in print, and all are now in e-text. He is studied widely; new film, television, and radio versions of some of his books have been made; and all of his letters have been published. However, there is still much to be discovered about this superstar of Victorian fiction.

Julie Ryan is the author of the Greek Island mystery series, Jenna's Journey, Sophia's Secret and Pandora's Prophecy. You can find out more about her here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00F0VYX34