Tag: Decent

H. P. Lovecraft – The Case of Charles Dexter Ward | Review

Title: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Author: H. P. Lovecraft

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 128

Rating: 3.5/5

If you can get past some of the casual racism that betrays itself in the way that the author strings a couple of sentences together here and there, there’s actually a decent book here. It’s remarkable in that it’s a great example of that sort of slow, creeping dread that Lovecraft did so well. What’s terrifying is that we can’t really see the evil that’s out there, it’s always just on the edge of our periphery.

Overall, a pretty good read, but definitely not one to go out of your way for it. It’s just alright, you know? But also influential.

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Agatha Christie – Surprise! Surprise! | Review

Title: Surprise! Surprise!

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 3.5/5

This book is something of an oddity, and in fact I hadn’t even heard of it until I spotted it going as part of an Agatha Christie job lot on eBay. Essentially, because different publishers released different books in different regions, there are some unique USA titles that never came out in the UK, and vice versa.

That mostly applies to short story collections, of which this is the perfect example. In fact, to say that I read this is almost cheating because I only bothered to read the stories that I hadn’t read before, and so there were only four of the twelve or thirteen in here that I actually read. I remember the ones that I skipped, though.

In fact, this is actually a pretty decent little read, if only because it features a bunch of Christie’s most well-known characters, from Parker Pyne to Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. It also includes the title story of The Witness for the Prosecution, which I’ve seen performed as a play before. I think the play was a little better than the short story, but both of them are very much worth consuming. All in all then, I’d have to say that this one is worth reading.

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