Red Lamp/The

I was very surprised to see the only other review for this novel state that it is among the author's worst books. Just goes to show how differently a work of art can hit different people!The Red Lamp is definitely that...a work of art. I've read all of Mary Roberts Rinehart's mysteries, but it is this one - The Red Lamp - that I most frequently pull off the shelf for a fourth or fifth reading.This book is a little creepier than many of the other Rinehart mysteries; it has a subtle undercurrent of the supernatural running through it. The characters are very vivid (especially that of the narrator) and the book manages to make a number of philosophical observations that remain profoundly relevant today.As to the plot, the mystery itself is top-notch, and the killer's motivation one of the most unusual and disturbing I have seen in any "golden age" mystery. This book's overall style reminds my very much of that extremely popular ghost novel of the early 1940s: "The Uninvited" by Dorothy Macardle. To compare the style and plot devices of The Red Lamp to more modern works, I would say it is also similar in structure and tone to those supernatural mysteries written by Barbara Michaels from the 1960s - 1990s (which still remain popular today).I'll close this review with a bit of trivia. While The Red Lamp does not depend on a supernatural killer, it does end with some of its inexplicable events purposely left unexplained. Upon reading the author's autobiography, I learned that she had some genuinely weird experiences, in a summer home she briefly occupied, and these became a partial inspiration for The Red Lamp.