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| Final Rating: 2.3/5 |
The Scarlet Mansion had its vivid moments of terrifying believable scenes where I would catch myself wanting to shout out warnings to the unfortunate numerous victims in the pages but left me in the dark many other times at the uneven dialogue, repetitive chapters (containing either flashbacks of schemes, senseless murders with animated violence dominating the passages or meetings with another trusting mark) and ultimately so many wasted opportunities for this novel to really shine with an ominous lingering glow of any kind of character development. I usually enjoy a beyond gloomy entertaining book with historical essentials that keeps me up but The Scarlet Mansion just wasn’t it and I was actually hoping to get a reimagined look into the mind of the historic narcissistic psychopath and con artist known as H. H. Holmes. Sadly he was just a shadowy villain who: lurked, traveled, plotted, showed anger and then left the scene in a trail of gore. Not exactly much to think on or what I was hoping for when I picked this novel up after reading so many excited reactions to this title. Perhaps this type of story is exactly what others have been looking for an extremely dramatic: suffocate’em, poison’em, drag’em and drop’em batting of history. If that is what the curious reader has been looking for, you found a chilling example of real life inspired horror but if there are those who wanted more without awkwardly wedged lite facts in long conversations and disappearing atmosphere or even enough details to fully capture the potential of the enduring mysteries from late 19th century Chicago, you may want to look elsewhere or put this one down and pick up The Devil in the White City, Depraved or H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil. I don’t know about you, but I have always found true historic accounts and depositions more frightening than any fiction.
-purchased and read on kindle
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