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Una voz en la oscuridad
El honorable Ludovic Bewes es un niño de trece años, frágil, doliente y delicado, que no representa su edad. Heredará la vasta propiedad de Brooke-Norton y el título de Lord Brooke. Sufre de pesadillas y de terrores nocturnos; un grito o una brusca racha de viento lo hacen palidecer. Muere de meningitis. En un dormitorio vecino se encuentra una especia de máscara...
304 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1925
3 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
Eden Phillpotts
544 books21 followersSee also: Harrington Hext
Eden Philpotts was an English novelist, short-story writer, and playwright with a particular interest in the county of Devon. His works include a cycle of 18 novels set in Dartmoor.
Eden Philpotts was an English novelist, short-story writer, and playwright with a particular interest in the county of Devon. His works include a cycle of 18 novels set in Dartmoor.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 25, 2025
This will not be your usual review. You see, the author behind this rather cozy Edwardian crime novel with supernatural horror elements also took a real-life secret with him to his grave. Could the truth be hinted at through the themes and narrative of this interesting mystery chiller?
A little more than a decade after the death of prolific and beloved British novelist and playwright, Eden Phillpotts, his daughter Adelaide shocked the literary world. Adelaide was also well-known for carrying on the family tradition of wordsmith, influenced by her neighbor Agatha Christie, and even coauthored some works with her father. In a 1976 interview with a certain Professor Dayananda, she revealed that she had an incestuous relationship with her father from about six up until her thirties. For some historians of literature, this possibility was not entirely a surprise, as there is evidence from numerous letters between Adelaide and her father showing that he had an inappropriately possessive and jealous attitude towards her interest in other men. Though this may not have entirely been unusual for the era, as no potential suitor was probably of enough class and breeding to please most Victorian fathers, we do know that Adelaide was a beauty who did not marry until she was 55, after which her father refused to speak to her again.
In light of that bit of history, I found "A Voice in the Dark" to be even more chilling.
The general premise is that a retired detective, John Ringrose, is inspired to solve one last mystery pro bono while staying at a hotel where a young boy died under suspicious circumstances. In the middle of the night, he hears the voice of the dead boy crying out from an empty room. What follows is a web of cat-and-mouse as the detective goes through elaborate means to extract confessions from the alleged perps involved in the boy's untimely demise. Under various assumed personages, the detective befriends the suspects over the course of a year, charming them into their confidence, and hoping that they are not so sociopathic as to be unable to extract confessions from a guilty conscience.
And indeed, the power of character over conscience is the heart of this novel. Both suspects seem to be very nice folks who no one would suspect of committing abuse against children. Ringrose's targets are affable, refined people, and if they have dark secrets to tell, they do not give them up easily. But the detective is convinced of their guilt, and inflicts slow psychological tortures on them while maintaining the guise of being a devoted friend and emotional support.
So the cat and the mouse both are practiced in the art of polishing the veneer, while who-knows-what is lurking beneath.
Detective Ringrose justifies his actions by saying he'd torture any man who would torture a child. Is this the author's true feelings or part of what he wishes his audience to think?
The novel was published in 1925, and as implied in the Dayananda interview, would have been written in the last years of his abusive relationship with Adelaide. Was Phillpotts working through his own guilt of his treatment of his daughter, and are we seeing his own conscience trying to break through the outer facade? Is this his attempt at a confession that ultimately justifies the facade, like his hero Ringrose does, as a necessary evil?
Alas, this a mystery likely never to be solved. The Dayananda interview itself is fraught with doubt as to its authenticity, and the resulting treatise was clearly an assassination attempt at Eden Phillpotts' reputation. In fact, it is quite possible that Professor Dayananda took a page out of this novel, as, like Detective Ringrose, he was convinced that Phillpotts was a hack and a fraud and set out to change public opinion of him through any means necessary.
Normally, I really do support the separation of the art from the artist. I enjoy the work of many professionals who we have later discovered were not very nice people. So I do want to emphasize that if you like the works of Eden Phillpotts, you should continue to indulge and enjoy, and as I have said, there is some doubt that the accusation, some years after Phillpotts' death, was entirely true.
But I bring this seedy little piece of historical literary gossip to light as a clear example of "life imitating art" so to speak. And though this work was enjoyable in its own right, it tended to be too dry and dragged a bit, but in the context of the greater mystery of what may have been going on in the author's psyche at the time, the book takes on a whole new layer of flavors.
So is this book really a clue to the inner Eden Phillpotts, speaking to us as a "Voice from the Dark?" If you are a fan of classic mystery and horror, I recommend you see for yourself!
A little more than a decade after the death of prolific and beloved British novelist and playwright, Eden Phillpotts, his daughter Adelaide shocked the literary world. Adelaide was also well-known for carrying on the family tradition of wordsmith, influenced by her neighbor Agatha Christie, and even coauthored some works with her father. In a 1976 interview with a certain Professor Dayananda, she revealed that she had an incestuous relationship with her father from about six up until her thirties. For some historians of literature, this possibility was not entirely a surprise, as there is evidence from numerous letters between Adelaide and her father showing that he had an inappropriately possessive and jealous attitude towards her interest in other men. Though this may not have entirely been unusual for the era, as no potential suitor was probably of enough class and breeding to please most Victorian fathers, we do know that Adelaide was a beauty who did not marry until she was 55, after which her father refused to speak to her again.
In light of that bit of history, I found "A Voice in the Dark" to be even more chilling.
The general premise is that a retired detective, John Ringrose, is inspired to solve one last mystery pro bono while staying at a hotel where a young boy died under suspicious circumstances. In the middle of the night, he hears the voice of the dead boy crying out from an empty room. What follows is a web of cat-and-mouse as the detective goes through elaborate means to extract confessions from the alleged perps involved in the boy's untimely demise. Under various assumed personages, the detective befriends the suspects over the course of a year, charming them into their confidence, and hoping that they are not so sociopathic as to be unable to extract confessions from a guilty conscience.
And indeed, the power of character over conscience is the heart of this novel. Both suspects seem to be very nice folks who no one would suspect of committing abuse against children. Ringrose's targets are affable, refined people, and if they have dark secrets to tell, they do not give them up easily. But the detective is convinced of their guilt, and inflicts slow psychological tortures on them while maintaining the guise of being a devoted friend and emotional support.
So the cat and the mouse both are practiced in the art of polishing the veneer, while who-knows-what is lurking beneath.
Detective Ringrose justifies his actions by saying he'd torture any man who would torture a child. Is this the author's true feelings or part of what he wishes his audience to think?
The novel was published in 1925, and as implied in the Dayananda interview, would have been written in the last years of his abusive relationship with Adelaide. Was Phillpotts working through his own guilt of his treatment of his daughter, and are we seeing his own conscience trying to break through the outer facade? Is this his attempt at a confession that ultimately justifies the facade, like his hero Ringrose does, as a necessary evil?
Alas, this a mystery likely never to be solved. The Dayananda interview itself is fraught with doubt as to its authenticity, and the resulting treatise was clearly an assassination attempt at Eden Phillpotts' reputation. In fact, it is quite possible that Professor Dayananda took a page out of this novel, as, like Detective Ringrose, he was convinced that Phillpotts was a hack and a fraud and set out to change public opinion of him through any means necessary.
Normally, I really do support the separation of the art from the artist. I enjoy the work of many professionals who we have later discovered were not very nice people. So I do want to emphasize that if you like the works of Eden Phillpotts, you should continue to indulge and enjoy, and as I have said, there is some doubt that the accusation, some years after Phillpotts' death, was entirely true.
But I bring this seedy little piece of historical literary gossip to light as a clear example of "life imitating art" so to speak. And though this work was enjoyable in its own right, it tended to be too dry and dragged a bit, but in the context of the greater mystery of what may have been going on in the author's psyche at the time, the book takes on a whole new layer of flavors.
So is this book really a clue to the inner Eden Phillpotts, speaking to us as a "Voice from the Dark?" If you are a fan of classic mystery and horror, I recommend you see for yourself!
June 11, 2016
A cat and mouse thriller that narrowly misses greatness. The reader knows early on that the "cat" is
July 27, 2022
Tiene un juego súper interesante con la paranoia y la representación, pero es tan policial inglés que por momentos aburre. Lo mejor de la novela son los primeros capítulos y los últimos. En especial el segundo donde se pone en tensión la razón por la posibilidad de lo fantasmagórico. Es un buen ejemplo, btw, de como algunos policiales se acercan al terror.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews