The villains of this tale are annoyingly inept. I'd quite like a retelling from Uncle Silas' perspective because he's just off his face on opiates the whole time while all his lackeys are failing to achieve anything but faintly irritating Maud!

As in all classic gothic novels, our heroine, Maud, goes to live in a big, spooky house and people attempt to marry her against her wishes. There's a distinct lack of scenery chat though, which is probably an improvement on the genre. The book is still about twice as long as it needs to be though! We get all the Radcliffe references of Northanger Abbey but without any of the humour. It was readable and had enough little mysteries to keep me interested.