The Beetle: A Mystery
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The Beetle is the celebrated Victorian horror story by Richard Marsh, originally published in serialized form in 1897, which at first enjoyed even greater popularity than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in the same year.
The Beetle tells the tale of an evil Ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle—a figure that induces terror in its victims.
This creepy, gothic tale is told by a series of protagonists, whose accounts are collected by a detective who assists in tracking the creature to its final mysterious end.
“A face looked into mine, and, in front of me, were those dreadful eyes. Then, whether I was dead or living, I said to myself that this could be nothing human—nothing fashioned in God’s image—could wear such a shape as that. Fingers were pressed into my cheeks, they were thrust into my mouth, they touched my staring eyes, shut my eyelids, then opened them again, and—horror of horrors!—the blubber lips were pressed to mine. The soul of something evil entered into me in the guise of a kiss.”
WARNING: The Beetle has been viewed by some as a critique of British imperial attitudes in the late Victorian era. The story includes racial stereotypes which may cause offense to some listeners.
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Richard Marsh (1857–1915) was a bestselling and prolific author of the late nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. Marsh produced nearly eighty volumes of fiction and numerous short stories, in genres including horror, crime, romance, and humor.
British audiobook narrator and AudioFile Earphones Award winner Nigel Patterson has many credits as a stage, screen, and voice-over actor that influence his powerful characterization across a broad range of genres. AudioFile commented "his keen ear and impeccable diction give insights into the prevailing attitudes of the period... his wholly credible characters stay with you long after you unplug." A graduate linguist of the University of Oxford, he is fluent in French and Spanish, has lived and worked in the U.S. for fifteen years, and knows many different accents and dialects from around the world.
