For anyone not in the know by now, I’ve been on a quest to read the classics of gothic literature. I’ve been working from a list. By now I’ve read about 80% of the books on this list and it’s proven pretty solid. Almost all the books are either important, beautiful, groundbreaking, thrilling, or some combination of those. Except for this one. Tales of Terror and Mystery, a collection of stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was not great. It was meh. I don’t understand how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made it on the list, and I really don’t understand why this particular collection made the list. Only some of the stories are horror and none of them are particularly gothic, and they’re certainly not among Doyle’s best or most famous stories. I’m baffled, really.

The Tales of Terror and the Tales of Mystery are actually two distinct halves of the book.  To start with the second half, the Tales of Mystery were profoundly disappointing. Doyle clearly knows how to write a mystery–Sherlock Holmes endures for good reason–but these aren’t his best. They feel like half-finished ideas that weren’t good enough for Sherlock to bother with. Unless you’re a diehard Doyle fan they’re not worth your time.

The Tales of Terror, however, were pretty good. “The Case of Lady Sannox” and “The Brazilian Cat” were tense little tales, and “The New Catacomb” was a nice twist on the theme of Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado”. These stories are worth an evening of your time. But they’re not on Poe’s level, or even Lovecraft’s. And speaking of Lovecraft, he’s not on this list at all, but he probably should be instead of Doyle. Lovecraft has become a controversial author in recent years (because he was really really racist), so I can see why someone might leave him off to avoid issues, but I wouldn’t replace him with this set of mostly forgettable stories. 

I give this one Haunted House and a deep sigh.