Friday's Forgotten Books: Philip Bennion's Death by Richard Marsh (1897)

. . . I had wandered into a world of cross questions and crooked answers.
—Richard Marsh, Philip Bennion's Death 74

My latest selection in Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books series is Philip Bennion's Death by Richard Marsh, originally published as The Mystery of Philip Bennion's Death in 1897. Old Mr. Otway and his lifelong friend Philip Bennion sit up talking late one night about the art of murder, and Otway wakes the next morning to find Bennion dead. As a sleepwalker, Otway fears that he has killed his friend while unconscious (he also possesses a talent that many writers would envy: he notes, "I have written stories and dispatched them to editors while fast asleep, and they have been accepted and paid for" [5]). However, there is a packet of other suspects: the resentful servant; the wastrel nephew who inherits Bennion's estate; the beautiful ward whose engagement was opposed by Bennion and who was accused by Bennion of duplicity; and the fiance, who, with his financial success and hearty personality, appears to be the perfect catch, making Bennion's opposition baffling. A mysterious Italian cabinet bought for a song is presented as integral to the murder but Marsh skillfully walks the line between otherworldly premises and all too human motivations.

Richard Marsh (aka Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857—1915) is best known for the supernatural novel The Beetle (1897), which rivaled another novel—Dracula—that year in popularity. His grandson was the horror writer Robert Aickman. In addition to Philip Bennion's Death, Valancourt Books has reprinted Marsh's Curios: Some Strange Adventures of Two Bachelors (1898) and The Datchet Diamonds (1898), as well as his collection of ghost stories, The Seen and the Unseen (1900).

Valancourt to reissue Richard Marsh's The Beetle.

"Mr. Marsh has as prettily gruesome an imagination as any writer of sensational fiction." —To-day.

Kansas City's Valancourt Books has announced that it will shortly reissue Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897), which created a sensation with its supernatural account of an Egyptian sect that seeks to use the powers of someone who can turn into a large beetle (pre-Kafka, of course).

Marsh was the pseudonym for Richard Bernard Heldmann (1857-1915); Valancourt has reprinted a number of his mysteries and ghost stories. Talent obviously runs in the family, for Marsh's grandson was the horror writer Robert Aickman.

And for those weary of the same names on the bestseller list, Valancourt's list of its top sellers for July provides a refreshing alternative:

1. Clermont by Regina Maria Roche (first publ. 1798)

2. Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons (first publ. 1793)

3. The Italian by Ann Radcliffe (first publ. 1797)

4. The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli (first publ. 1895)

5. (tie) The Fate of Fenella by Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, et al. (first publ. 1892)

5. (tie) The Garden God by Forrest Reid (first publ. 1905)