The Beetle

About this book

A strange figure follows a politician through London, seeming to alter its age, sex and even bodily form. Those who encounter it find their wills weakened and their safest rooms no longer secure.

Richard Marsh's 1897 sensation novel follows the mystery through several narrators, each supplying a different piece of the pursuit. Hypnosis, disguise and an Egyptian cult converge in a tale of obsession and revenge. Published in the same year as Dracula, it creates its own unsettling intruder, one whose power depends on the difficulty of saying exactly what it is.