The House in Marsh Road

by Laurence Meynell

When Arthur meets the lovely but evil Valerie Stockley, after he and his new wife move into the house his wife has inherited, he soon becomes possessed by a force he cannot fight. Alongside Valerie, lust, greed and weakness led him deeper into depravity until he is finally committed to murder. But the house is strangely haunted - things move of their own accord, curtains draw themselves, and bells ring. As the murder plot thickens, Arthur is forced to face the power which occupies the house - and by now there is no going back ...

Genres: Horror, Fiction

256 pages

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Born in 1899, in Wolverhampton, Laurence Walter Meynell was the son of Herbert Meynell, chairman of Meynell and Sons Ltd., and his wife Agnes. He was educated at St. Edmund's College in Ware, Hertfordshire, and served in the artillery in WWI. He worked for an estate agency, and as a teacher, before his first novel, Mockbeggar, won a competition run by the publishers Harrap in 1924, and he turned to writing as a career. Meynell also worked as an editor, beginning in the 1950s, for the Bodley Head, and for Time and Tide. He was married twice, to novelist Shirley Darbyshire, and to Joan Belfrage, and had one daughter. He died in 1989.

Meynell is primarily remembered for his crime fiction, much of it published under his own name, but he also published children's fiction under the pseudonyms A. Stephen Tring and Valerie Baxter. He also used the pseudonyms Robert Eton and Geoffrey Ludlow.

Reviews

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this 4 stars because this is its first rating and it was a lot of fun.

It's an old pot-boiler from 1960 with a haunted house, a murderous husband, a grasping land developer and an evil "other woman".

Worth wasting a couple of hours on if you come across a copy, but don't expect great literature.

[Richard Dominguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good short story with the usual murder plot and haunted house mix. This one is well written, moves quickly and has little nonsense detail. Forward and to the point it kept my interest from start to finish.