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Although the named novella takes up almost half the length of this volume, a further eight tales can be found between its covers, a number of which I found more satisfying than The Haunted Hotel<\/em> itself. This is not to say that I did not enjoy the latter, for I did, but it struck me as being less polished than some of the shorter works.<\/p>\n Whereas Collins is best known for his mystery novels The Woman in White<\/em> and The Moonstone<\/em>, with the second title being widely hailed as the first detective novel written in English, he was also rated highly as a writer of ghost stories, and The Haunted Hotel<\/em> is, unsurprisingly, just such a story. However, the reader has to wait a long time before any form of ghostly manifestation materialises, with much of the novella reading more as a conventional mystery. Although I may be mistaken in taking this view, it struck me that Collins had, perhaps, originally intended his novella to be a full-length novel, but had grown tired of it, and thus decided to abridge it. Thus, the author appears to have employed the device of allowing one of his leading characters to divulge the hidden course of events by passing off his own unrealised notes in the form of notes for an as yet unwritten play. It left me feeling that it could have become something greater than it was.<\/p>\n It was, therefore, the short stories that I found most to my taste in this collection, particularly The Dream Woman<\/em>, A Terribly Strange Bed<\/em>, Nine O’ Clock!<\/em>, and The Devil’s Spectacles<\/em>. Only the first of these four can be described as a true ghost story, although Nine O’Clock!<\/em> does feature a doppelganger and deathly prophecy.<\/p>\n The Dream Woman<\/em> centres upon a premonitory haunting, in which the tale of an unfortunate ostler is recounted by his current employer – the landlord of an inn – to the narrator. It is an atmospheric classic, in which Collins builds an eerie tension that is sure to hook the attention of any lover of a good ghostly yarn. The concluding story in this collection – The Devil’s Spectacles<\/em> – is a supernatural oddity, and all the better for it. In this, the protagonist is gifted a pair of spectacles by the most unsavoury of characters, and the powers that they bestow upon the wearer prove to be of a suitably Mephistophelian nature; they are not what could be termed ‘rose tinted’. Still, this engaging morality tale possesses a somewhat mythic quality, as well as a devilish dose of humour, and is my joint favourite in this collection.<\/p>\n Overall, although I found some of the tales a little overly melodramatic for my taste, I’d recommend this volume to the thrifty reader who is interested in classic mysteries with a dash of the supernatural.<\/p>\nShare this:<\/h3>