Three Complete Novels by America's Mistress of Mystery: The Bat, The Haunted Lady, The Yellow Room

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

This unique omnibus includes The Bat--probably Rinehart's most famous work--a classic tale of people trapped in an isolated country house while a storm rages and a serial killer is on the loose, The Haunted Lady, one of a series featuring Nurse Pinkerton, and The Yellow Room, a puzzler about murder and family secrets in a small town.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Classics

585 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

Mysteries of the well-known American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart include The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Door (1930).

People often called this prolific author the American version of Agatha Christie. She is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it," though the exact phrase doesn't appear in her works, and she invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing.

Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues, and special articles. Many of her books and plays were adapted for movies, such as The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). Critics most appreciated her murder mysteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ro...

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Haunted Lady by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Elderly Mrs. Fairbanks is spending her remaining days inside the home she's lived in for a good many years. She's confined to her bed and in a frail condition. Her daughter Marian Garrison has been living with her in a bitter state since the divorce. Jan, the daughter of Marian and Frank Garrison also resides there. Carlton and Susie Fairbanks are looking for a farm to move to...something they'll be able to maintain due to the loss of their financial security. And then there are the members of Mrs. Fairbanks staff, all who have been with her for many years.
Strange goings-on has been witnessed by Mrs. Fairbanks in the confines of her room. Bats, rats, and whatnot have entered her room without anyone having knowledge of how or why...except to scare the elderly woman to a quicker demise.
Inspector Fuller is called into action by Mrs. Fairbanks for protection and to get to the bottom of this situation. An idea comes to him and he calls on Hilda Adams aka Miss Pinkerton. She's a qualified nurse and his right-hand sleuth. Then a good old fashioned mystery begins.

I looked forward to this my 2nd Miss Pinkerton mystery and with good reason. M.R.R. was and should still be America's Mistress of Mystery. Excellent reading with everything a mystery should have.

[Pamela Mclaren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good mystery, especially when I am enjoying it so much I forget the time and little incidentals as eating or doing chores. And Mary Roberts Rinehart is a pretty good master of the genre. To say I loved all three of these classic mysteries would not be an understatement but I will say that the last one, The Yellow Room, was amazing. All are entertaining and pretty dramatic stories and very good reading.

The Bat pits a crusty old woman who refuses to leave her isolated mansion, despite fears of an elusive killer known as The Bat.

The Haunted Lady also features a feisty elderly woman and bats, this time of the creature kind. Despite a failed effort to kill her with arsenic in her sugar bowl, someone is trying to do her in by scaring her to death with, among other creatures, bats. When that seems to fail, they try something even more lethal.

But in the Yellow Room, there's a young woman who turns up very dead in the linen closet of a summer home in Maine. Suspicion falls naturally on the members of the family that own the home — and the only one who seems to think otherwise is a convalescing serviceman with a mystery past.

[Jlnpeacock Peacock · Rating 4 out of 5]

The advantage of having three novels in one book is that one can readily compare the author's growth/transformation as a writer over several years. The first novel was set in 1914, the second 1935, and the last in 1945. The mysteries were interesting, but the changing landscape of American thought and morals as revealed through the reading of all three stories was enlightening. Rinehart writes well and does give an interesting mystery, but would be a bit outdated now since so many have followed in her wake and employed her style of mystery writing. Some of her opinions of life were probably influenced by her experience as a World War I correspondent. It was a good read and good information about time periods which benefit from reading primary sources.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Bat was by far the best book in the collection- the mystery was the most intriguing and the characters were the best developed. I loved The Bat- it's one of my favorite mysteries now!
The Haunted Lady wasn't very good in general. There wasn't enough of a mystery and the characters were not very appealing.
The Yellow Room was alright, but there wasn't enough romance between the characters that had enough spark, and the mystery was very complex and was not unraveled until the very end. What I mean by complex is that the reader can't solve it themselves because the facts are brought up too randomly. Some people like it that way, but I prefer to try solving the mystery as the characters do. Maybe I was just too stupid for this one :P It confused me too much.
All in all, I like Mary Roberts Rinehart's style and will probably read more of her in the future.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though virtually forgotten now, Mary Roberts Rinehart was a top-selling and quite famous American mystery writer in the early 1900s, the equal of Britain's Agatha Christie. These are three of her most famous novels, and I believe they follow the standard pattern of a murder in a big house, with servants, often with a plucky female character, a love interest, red herring strangers as suspects -- all the ingredients.

[Jill Bartos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading Yellow Room

[Miriam]

What I get out of The Bat, a long short story, short novel: If someone takes you gun and threatens you with it, bluff and tell them it is empty.