The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice -- Wilkie Collins

One of my co-workers holds me responsible for picking the majority of her reading material. I gave her The Moonstone last week, which reminded me that The Haunted Hotel had been sitting forlornly on my bookshelves, as yet unread, for ages and ages. Poor thing.

According to the back of the book (I love Dover editions), this book was Collins’ “last lucid effort before ill health and opium drained his powers”.  Originally serialized in 1878, The Haunted Hotel is the story of... well, it’s complicated.  I’ll give it a try:

Lord Montbarry jilted Agnes Lockwood to marry the Countess Narona. No one in Montbarry’s family approves of Narona, and his younger brother, Henry, is especially unforgiving -- he refuses to even speak to his brother.  (That may have more to do with the fact that he’s in love with Agnes, but so be it.) Montbarry and his new wife gallivant around on their honeymoon, eventually meeting the Countess’ brother, Baron Rivar (who many people suspect is not her brother, but actually her secret lover) and moving into a Venetian palace.

Shortly thereafter, Lord Montbarry dies.

What’s not to love?  There’s a Days of our Lives plot and characters, two haunted rooms – complete with hidden chamber, mysterious smells and ghostly head – and lines like this:

What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their hiding-places in a woman’s dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!

Agnes is a bit of a Rowena – she’s far less interesting than the Countess, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would be madly in love with her – but the story itself is super fun and genuinely spooky.