Mary Roberts Rinehart: Has she written any true gothics?

[lostintwilight]

I'm trying to trim down my book collection and I have many of her titles. I haven't read any of them, but in reading reviews and such on the internet, it seems they're considered more mystery than gothics. I know at one time they were probably marketed as gothics, but are any of them true gothics?

[Penfeather]

I'm trying to trim down my book collection and I have many of her titles. I haven't read any of them, but in reading reviews and such on the internet, it seems they're considered more mystery than gothics. I know at one time they were probably marketed as gothics, but are any of them true gothics?

I'd say that MRR's books usually have at least some gothic elements (old houses and other typical atmospheric trappings, plots centered around women in danger, etc.), but she's an earlier writer than those who later defined the modern form of the genre such as Stewart, Holt, et al.  Therefore not all of her books would necessarily meet the definition as it came to be known in the strict modern sense.

If you have The Red Lamp, that's a keeper, and could fairly be called a gothic.  From the back cover synopsis:

"When Jane Porter saw the ghostly outlines of the great mansion of Twin Hollows emerging from the rising mist of the huge salt bog, she sensed that the whispered rumors about the old house were true.  A musty odor of evil seemed to hang in its dimly lit rooms and winding corridors, and the spirits of those who had mysteriously died here seemed to moan with the wind from the sea.  Jane's husband had forced her to come here.  Her devotion to this strangely haunted man kept her here.  And as the fearful days and terrifying nights passed, she began to realize that neither she, nor the man she loved, might ever leave alive . . . "