The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories by Marjorie Bowen

“The Fair Hair of Ambrosine” lacked narrative engagement, and as it went on, the ending became predictable. Of the nine tales, only two disappointed me. They have to deal with the unknown, usually in the dark. The characters can’t just flick on an electric light or grab a mobile phone to ring the police. I think setting them in the 1800s or earlier adds to the supernatural feel. Most stories have a good twist and all are vividly told. While there’s no full-blown horror here, we do have some quality tales filled with an eerie atmosphere and suspense. “The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories” isn’t likely to persuade you to sleep with the light on, but every so often you may experience a few shivers. (3) “The Scoured Silk” - an excellent horror story in which young Elisa Minden, soon to be wed to the older Humphrey Orford, becomes frightened and suspicious as her fiancé displays some unusual quirks, particularly with regard to his first wife, who died under mysterious circumstances some twenty years earlier. The story is actually rather tame, but it is suspenseful and well-paced, and titling it an “adventure” playfully underscores just how unremarkable Mr John Proudie’s life actually was. While most of the stories barely moved the needle for me, there were a few that were compelling: (1) “Elsie’s Lonely Room” - A sad story about a little girl’s miserable life, with an even sadder gut-punch ending (2) “The Adventure of Mr John Proudie” - Strange visitors one night intrude on the mundane life of a meek apothecary, who then witnesses some ghastly occurrences. Ultimately it says that the weird fiction genre was not a strong suit in her literary output.

It’s just a bit off-putting, and perhaps an indication that the author did not have a lot of fresh ideas and therefore lifted from her prior work. It was an odd feeling and then each time I suddenly realized that Bowen is repeating herself with her thematic strokes: multiple stories of self-fulfilling prophecy, of unhappy marriages, of womanizing cads, of murderous revenge and a pair of stories that both begin by basically saying that “this strange tale that follows needed to be stitched together from various sources.”. As I was reading, each story had an air of familiarity in some way or other. Most of these twelve stories are predictable, pedestrian tales, of little style, substance, or atmosphere. I’m a big fan of the Wordsworth Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural series, but the Marjorie Bowen anthology, The Bishop of Hell & Other Stories, is one entry in the series that I really struggled to get through.

The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories by Marjorie Bowen