TITLE: The Red Lamp
AUTHOR: Mary Roberts Rinehart
312 pages, American Mystery Classics, ISBN 9781613161029 (softcover, hardcover)
MY RATING: 3 stars out of 5
SHORT REVIEW: The atmospheric “seaside gothic” setting, a plethora of interesting potential suspects, and the possibility of supernatural activity in The Red Lamp make up for the repeated instances of the main character being in the wrong place at the wrong time in this mystery from “the American Agatha Christie” Mary Roberts Rinehart. If you can get past the main character’s frequent mis-steps and overuse of the “if only we had known how important [item] would be” trope, the rest of the cast, as well as the setting itself, will pull you in and make for a mostly enjoyable read.
LONGER REVIEW: The Red Lamp is narrated by literature professor William Porter mostly through the use of a journal he kept during a particularly troublesome summer holiday on the property he inherits after his Uncle Horace dies. Locals insist the house is haunted. Porter is skeptical, but can’t deny weird stuff is going on, especially when local sheep are ritualistically slaughtered and a volunteer deputy goes missing. Porter can’t help being in the wrong place at the wrong time multiple times throughout the book, becoming the chief suspect as disappearances and bodies pile up.
And that’s what I struggled with the most with this book: just how many times can a man who knows he’s under suspicion and being watched realistically put himself in situations that only increase the police’s suspicions. If it were being played for humor, as a pastiche of period mystery novels, I might feel differently, but there’s no indication Rinehart was sending up the genre or herself. Porter complains of his rising anxiety over being suspected often enough that at one point I actually shouted, “Then stop going places alone!”
I also was not a fan of the overuse of the trope where the narrator interrupts his own journal with phrases like “if only we’d realized at the time how important [thing] would be later…” as if the author didn’t trust her audience to pick up on clues, or as if the narrator is asking the reader for forgiveness for his overweening cluelessness.
What did I like about the book? The atmosphere of the seaside setting. The large manor house and smaller lodge and boathouse are all as much characters as the humans, and the rural surroundings of wood and farmland and dirt roads add a nice sense of menace at key moments. I liked the slow development of the possible supernatural aspect and how the author kept me wondering right up to the end as to whether the big reveal would be supernatural, mundane, or a combination of both. The broad cast of characters, from Porter’s “psychically sensitive” wife, lovesick niece and the niece’s heroic love interest, to the suspicious local doctor, neighboring “recently rich” couple and fairly incompetent police, kept me guessing and provided plenty of suspects outside of the protagonist to choose from.
What I liked and what I didn’t like ultimately balanced each other out. I think had the book been about a quarter shorter in length, with fewer contrivances to make the narrator the chief suspect, I would have enjoyed it more.
This book has been on my shelves in one form or another for quite a few years, having picked up older paperback editions at various used bookstores. American Mystery Classics brought it back into print a few years back, and it’s that edition that I added to my TBR Challenge as an alternate title last year. It’s the title from last year I didn’t read, so I made sure it was first on this year’s challenge. I’m glad I read it, despite the flaws. Mary Roberts Rinehart has been called “the American Agatha Christie” and according to some accounts even outsold Dame Agatha. American Mystery Classics has been steadily bringing her catalog back into print, and I intend to read a few more of her titles, probably with one of her series characters.
