The problem with the great classics (particularly those written in the 19th century) is that many of them owe their continued popularity to the fact that people tend to confuse archaic vocabularies with erudition, and therefore tend to think more highly of books just because they're old. This is certainly the case with Bram Stoker's Dracula, which came out in the same year as The Beetle (and was initially less popular, as people are fond of pointing out), and can be credited for its influence, but not its quality. So I was worried about The Beetle, as it is very much the same kind of book, being a supernatural ``thriller'' with unreliable first-person narrators and an acceptable-target ethnic foe (Eastern European in Dracula, Egyptian Arab in The Beetle). Additionally, it was out of print for over four decades, needing Penguin hipsters to revive it, so how good could it really be?
Turns out I shouldn't have worried; despite all appearances (including the best efforts of whoever replaced the byline ``A Mystery'' with ``Vengeance Takes Many Forms'' on the cover, as if this is a straight-to-video movie), The Beetle is actually pretty good. It's not High Literature by any means, but it's certainly the supernatural thriller done exactly right. It's the product of its age, and it has aged very well.