The Red Lamp

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

Book Overview

A professor tries to stop a murder spree, uncertain whether the culprit is man or ghost.

An all-around skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, literature professor William Porter gives no credence to claims that Twin Towers, the seaside manor he's just inherited, might be haunted. He finds nothing mysterious about the conditions in which his Uncle Horace died, leaving the property behind; it was a simple case of cardiac arrest, nothing more. So, though his wife, more attuned to spiritual disturbance, refuses to occupy the main house, Porter convinces her to spend a summer at the estate and stay in the lodge elsewhere on the grounds. But not long after they arrive, Porter sees the evidence of haunting that the townspeople speak of: a shadowy figure illuminated by the red light of Horace's writing lamp, the very light that shone on the scene of his death. And though he isn't convinced that it is a spirit and not a man, Porter knows that, whichever it is, the figure is responsible for the rash of murders--first of sheep, then of people--that breaks out across the countryside. Somehow, though, the suspect eludes him every time and, in his pursuit, Porter risks implicating himself in the very crimes he hopes to solve.

Written with atmospheric prose and tension that rises with every page, The Red Lamp is a hybrid of murder mystery and gothic romance that shows the "American Agatha Christie" at the height of her powers.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1613161131
• ISBN13: 9781613161135
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: American Mystery Classics
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Love Mary Roberts Rinehart , but...Dull

Story moved ,very slowly, just all around dull for me.

Possibly Mary Roberts Rinehart's Best Mystery

I was very surprised to see the only other review for this novel state that it is among the author's worst books. Just goes to show how differently a work of art can hit different people!The Red Lamp is definitely that...a work of art. I've read all of Mary Roberts Rinehart's mysteries, but it is this one - The Red Lamp - that I most frequently pull off the shelf for a fourth or fifth reading.This book is a little creepier than many of the other Rinehart mysteries; it has a subtle undercurrent of the supernatural running through it. The characters are very vivid (especially that of the narrator) and the book manages to make a number of philosophical observations that remain profoundly relevant today.As to the plot, the mystery itself is top-notch, and the killer's motivation one of the most unusual and disturbing I have seen in any "golden age" mystery. This book's overall style reminds my very much of that extremely popular ghost novel of the early 1940s: "The Uninvited" by Dorothy Macardle. To compare the style and plot devices of The Red Lamp to more modern works, I would say it is also similar in structure and tone to those supernatural mysteries written by Barbara Michaels from the 1960s - 1990s (which still remain popular today).I'll close this review with a bit of trivia. While The Red Lamp does not depend on a supernatural killer, it does end with some of its inexplicable events purposely left unexplained. Upon reading the author's autobiography, I learned that she had some genuinely weird experiences, in a summer home she briefly occupied, and these became a partial inspiration for The Red Lamp.