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The Circular Staircase
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The Circular Staircase
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The Circular Staircase
Audiobook7 hours

The Circular Staircase

Written by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Narrated by Laurie Klein

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Twenty-year-old Halsey and 24-year-old Gertrude, nephew and niece of Rachel Inness, a well-to-do middle-aged spinster, talk Rachel into renting a large country house for the summer. Mysterious happenings occur the first night they are there, something or someone falls down the stairs in the middle of the night. A man is dead at the foot of the circular staircase. Now the question arises as to who he is and why was he in the house. Could it have something to do with the valuables hidden in the house that are unknown by the new tenants?
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 3, 2014
ISBN9781614536741
Author

Mary Roberts Rinehart

Often referred to as the American Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American journalist and writer who is best known for the murder mystery The Circular Staircase—considered to have started the “Had-I-but-known” school of mystery writing—and the popular Tish mystery series. A prolific writer, Rinehart was originally educated as a nurse, but turned to writing as a source of income after the 1903 stock market crash. Although primarily a fiction writer, Rinehart served as the Saturday Evening Post’s correspondent for from the Belgian front during the First World War, and later published a series of travelogues and an autobiography. Roberts died in New York City in 1958.

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Reviews for The Circular Staircase

Rating: 3.473684210526316 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

38 ratings21 reviews

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  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Very confusing! A book can have sub-plots. A mystery can have sub-mysteries. This book carried it to an extreme. I was way too confused.It was about 90 pages before I realized that the relationship of the second main character was that of maid.The author treats servants as if they are more furniture than human.One main male character was unacceptable when he was thought to be part of the working class. Once he was identified as actually being part of the upper class, he was totally acceptable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart; (4*)It has been many years since my last Rinehart read and in reading The Circular Staircase, I was reminded anew how well respected and beloved Mary Roberts Rinehart was & perhaps still is in this style of the genre. Quite a remarkable read, this little book has several different, but still associated, mysteries going on at once. There is the theft of all the local Bank's securities, a couple of good & ghoulish murders to be reconciled, a kidnapping, a mysterious disappearance, a mansion that tends to be broken into nightly upsetting the entire household, among other little mysteries.Our protagonist & heroine is the spinster auntie of a young man & his sister. She has rented the manse for the season whilst her home is being remodeled & updated. Those whom the mysteries effect and those who are causing are in great part affiliated with the home owner of the house she has taken. And of course she, her niece & her nephew are affected by all of the goings on and are in the midst of the solving of the mysteries.I do enjoy a cosy mystery and I loved this one. It is a terrific book with which to cuddle into your favorite chair and spend an afternoon reading. I highly recommend it for those of you inclined to this genre.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Having recently re-read a bit of Agatha Christie's work and also recently watched movie and TV adaptations of her things, I was intrigued when I heard of Mary Roberts Rinehart referred to as the "American Agatha Christie." I had never heard of her but figured I'd give her writing a try. A general consensus suggested that The Circular Staircase is her most well-known and lauded work so I started there.The book began (and continued) with a style and pattern that felt rather familiar when compared with other 19th and early 20th century writing. In this novel we are introduced to a wealth spinster named Miss Rachel Innes. Miss Innes has decided, in a moment of uncharacteristic impulsiveness, to rent a summer home with her niece and nephew. We are quickly drawn in by her idiosyncrasies and those of the people around her, particularly her servant Liddy.Almost immediately upon arriving in the home, Miss Innes encounters strange happenings. That first night she's there, she encounters a number of strange noises from an unknown trespasser and a tumble down the circular staircase in the middle of the night. Then, the night her niece and nephew arrive, a man is mysteriously murdered at the foot of the staircase with no apparent witnesses or suspects.With a balance of pride and curiosity, Miss Innes refuses to leave the summer home and instead decides to try and unravel the mystery on her own. She doesn't seem to have a history of crime solving or any particular talents or penchant towards that profession but she lets her enthusiasm be her drive.After the excitement of the first few chapters, I felt the book settle into a bit of a dry spell. It worked its way through methodical plot and character development, keeping the reader (and Miss Innes) an arm's length (or farther) from the actual facts while presenting small glimpses of the motives of the various characters. I sometimes find it infuriating when authors hold back this sort of information, but the way it was presented here felt natural to me. Because Miss Innes is largely a stranger in the area, we are introduced to plenty of new characters and plot developments throughout the story and it makes sense that she is not privy to the information ahead of time and thus it is acceptable that the reader is similarly ignorant.Some of the mishaps and coincidences through the story felt a little predictable though I had to remind myself that this story is over 100 years old and these concepts may have been entirely unique at the time. There were also a couple of moments where I was genuinely and happily surprised by the outcome of a situation. Towards the end of the book, the pacing picked up steam again and put many of the central characters into some degree of peril which added to the suspense and engagement of the reading. The final unraveling was interesting and satisfying.I found the writing to be crisp, clean and enjoyable. It had a nice balance of 19th century English formality and early 20th century American whimsy. It was both elegant and playful. At the same time, it wasn't so engaging that I wanted to rush right out and read the rest of Rinehart's work. In some ways, it felt too similar to a lot of other things I've read and not compelling enough to differentiate it and make me yearn for more. So while I've made a mental note to keep an eye out for more writing by Rinehart, I won't be actively putting her at the top of my list.***3.5 out of 5 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    After reading Man in the Lower Ten I researched the life of Mary Roberts Rinehart as I thought I had read some of her novels when I was in high school but couldn't remember any of the titles and wanted to know more about the author. Learning Rinehart was "an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie, although her first mystery novel was published 14 years before Christie's first novel in 1920" was extraordinary. "Rinehart is also considered to have invented the 'Had-I-But-Known' school of mystery writing, with the publication of The Circular Staircase (1908)" so that had to be my next selection to read by this author.

    The edition of The Circular Staircase that I read was Number 7 of the Dell Great Mystery Library published by Dell in June, 1957 with copyright by Mary Roberts Rinehart in 1908 and 1935. The cover design for this edition was by Push-Pin Studios. In the upper left-hand corner of the cover is the price of 35 cents. What a treasure.

    With book width of 4 1/2" and book length just over 6 1/4" it feels like holding a vertical 4" x 6" index card in hand that is slightly thicker. Measurements aside it is 224 action-packed pages of suspense. As I closed the novel, it brings wonder to mind if Agatha Christie ever read any novels by Mary Roberts Rinehart. I can't wait to read another of her novels.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    How I loved this old mystery when I read it first at age 13. It was one of the first adult mysteries I read, along with Agatha Christie and Daphne duMaurier's Rebecca. It was a natural progression from Nancy Drew and the girl detectives I loved when younger.All these years later, there are things you just can't ignore, like an uncritical young reader can. The casual racism can't be overlooked, although sadly, the author was undoubtedly just voicing the attitudes of the time. After Miss Innes's nephew buys a car, she learns to "never stop to look at the dogs one has run down. People are apt to be so unpleasant about their dogs." The implication is that if you are rich enough to buy a car in 1908, you have the right to run down anything you damn well please. These people are wealthy enough to rent a house for the summer with "22 rooms and 5 baths", which seemingly makes them unaccountable for anything they do.All that aside, I'll always have a place in my heart and on my bookshelf for The Circular Staircase, despite its faults, as it was one of the first books that started me on 50 years of reading murder mysteries.As for the Had I But Known school of detective fiction, Ogden Nash parodied that old writer's trick in his poem Don't Guess, Let Me Tell You. "Had I But Known then what I know now, I could have saved at least three lives by revealing to the Inspector the conversation I heard through that fortuitous hole in the floor."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Amusing as an early example of the classic type of detective story that would reach its most finished form with Christie and Sayers a couple of decades later. But rather slow-moving, even ponderous, by later standards, not only in its jokes but also in the technical development of the plot, both of which the experienced mystery reader will see coming several chapters ahead of where the author is trying to reveal them. Surprisingly, I found that the thing that interested me about it more than anything else was the use of the wealthy spinster, Miss Innes, as the viewpoint character. She's the sort of lady who would appear as a minor figure in inter-war novels, endlessly sparring with her elderly lady's-maid and fretting about the Servant Problem and mocked as a quaint survival of an earlier age. But here we see the world through her social attitudes, in which doctors, policemen and public officials are all treated as slightly superior sorts of tradesmen, who might exceptionally be permitted to use the front door...
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Abandoned before finishing (2014).This book was simply too dated for me to enjoy reading it. The casual racism and the "dialect" that the only black character used were particularly egregious.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Six-word review: Adequate but unexceptional country house mystery.Extended review:Here's an author whose work I'd never read before and was very unlikely ever to read. Her name was associated in my mind with frothy, shallow popular fiction of the sort that would be no challenge to semiliterate middle schoolers looking for an easy read for a mandatory book report. (No, I don't know where such prejudices come from. But who doesn't have them, in one flavor or another?)As it happened, I found myself waiting in my car while someone did an errand, and I needed something to read. I'd had the foresight to grab my Kindle on the way out the door. From a recently downloaded bargain collection of mysteries, I picked this one at random without even noticing the author's name.My verdict: better than expected. It read like a low-grade case of Hill House as visited by a middle-aged spinster channeling Holmes while on Victorian holiday in (I think) upstate New York. (It sounded so British that I had trouble remembering it was set in the U.S.) Wikipedia tells me that this crime melodrama is credited with being the first of the "had I but known" genre of mystery novels.It was duly creepy, with ghostly nocturnal activity, unexplained disappearances, a shocking corpse, false identities, and much, much more, not to mention a spunky heroine who forgets to tell anyone when she goes off in search of things that go bump in the night. I was sufficiently entertained to return to it over the next couple of weeks, in short bursts, and finish it up.I'm not in any hurry for more Rinehart, but in case I feel the need, there seems to be an ample assortment in the anthology. At least I know there's something mildly diverting on tap for some other waiting room stay.(Kindle edition)
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I found this classic mystery about murder in a country home mildly enjoyable, but I wouldn't read another Rinehart title. I enjoyed the protagonist's tart humor and her plucky attitude. The story included just about every mystery cliche you can think of. Perhaps they were not cliches in their time, but I couldn't help rolling my eyes. Oh, and the casual racism didn't help matters, either.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An oldie but a goodie. The story is nothing really to write home about, but the plot was clever and the protagonist was a particularly strong female so I enjoyed that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I think I may have bought this quite cheaply, seeing an opportunity to do a bit of "vintage" reading. It has been on my kindle for a few months only.At the beginning of this e-book version of THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE there is a biographical introduction to the life and works of Mary Roberts Rinehart. Here is an extract: This book is credited with having been the first mystery to use the "Had I But Known" formula. This style of mystery centers around the protagonist withholding important details until it is too late. Often this variety of tale is narrated as a flashback from the protagonist's point of view. They will withhold the special damning piece of information from the reader as well, only revealing it after the climactic moment involving the secret clue. When done well, the technique can create real suspense for the reader.I found myself remembering the phrase "Had I But Known " because once you know this was a feature of Rinehart's style, then it is certainly there.There is an almost Gothic quality to the plot lines and setting of THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE. The story is narrated by Rachel Innes, who doesn't always understand the implications of what she has observed. There are two deaths, ghostly rappings emanating from the walls and ceilings, and as the novel progresses the plot strands get increasingly complex, as if the characters have got away from the author. In fact one part of the plot resolution gives the impression of having been plucked from the air. The central plot appears to relate to the stock market crash of 1903.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    by Mary Roberts Rinehart (Fiction, Mystery, Vintage) Mary Roberts Rinehart was considered the American Agatha Christie and for many years reigned as queen of the American mystery genre. The Circular Staircase was her second published book (1908) and featured the second, and last, outing of the tart-tongued middle-aged Miss Cornelia Van Gorder. Miss Van Gorder has invited her niece and nephew to accompany her to a country house for a relaxing summer. But instead of rural quiet they found murder and hijinks.Roberts Rinehart wrote with humour and a great sense of place and time, but I found it just a little too madcap.3½ stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How had I never heard of the awesomeness that is Mary Roberts Rinehart?? The Circular Staircase was one of the first books I downloaded for free onto my Kindle, and I only grabbed it because the author was compared to Anna Katherine Green whom wrote The Leavenworth Case (a book that I enjoyed when I read it last year). After reading The Circular Staircase I've downloaded every single book by this author that I can get my hands on. I want more! The Circular Staircase begins with Rachel Innes deciding to spend the summer in the country with her nephew and niece. Little does she know that renting Sunnyside for the summer will mean murder, mystery, and intrigue. For mysterious happenings are going on at Sunnyside and Rachel instantly finds herself a part of them. Rachel is a great main character to be narrating the story because of her dry sense of humor. I found myself laughing out loud at various points in the story thanks to her opinions and musings on everything that was happening. In fact, being able to laugh at the story while still being intrigued by the mystery was one of my favorite parts of the book! I find more and more that I love classic mysteries like this because the authors know how to spin a good tale without lots of blood and gore. Instead Rinehart created a mystery filled with atmosphere and tension as the reader wondered what could possibly be going on at the house. It made for a great read that left me wanting more! My only issue with this book is something that goes more along with the time period that the book was written. The book does have some racial undertones in it but if you take in consideration when it was written then it makes more sense as to why the author included these viewpoint into the story. I didn't care for it but obviously I wasn't born in this time period either. Anyways....Overall a really, really good read and a book that I enjoyed WAY more than I expected to. Just writing up my thoughts on this book makes me want to try more by her or grab up something by Agatha Christie. If you are ever looking for a gothic mystery novel then I think you should give this one a try. Just don't expect to be surprised by the ending. That part I could see coming from a mile away but luckily it didn't matter because I was enjoying the book too much. Highly recommended especially to mystery fans!Bottom Line: One of those books that instantly makes you add the author to your must read list!Disclosure: This was a book I downloaded for free onto my Kindle thru Amazon.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Vintage and Retro are all the rage for some stuff like clothes and photography (Instagram?? I don’t get it, but whatever) and so I said ‘what the hell’ and downloaded this 100-year-old mystery novel onto the iPad. A review especially praised the stalwart spinster protagonist and the quaint setting and characters so I felt pretty confident I’d like it. Unfortunately, our stalwart spinster is also a raging racist and the supporting characters were pretty much there to be ordered about, worried over and despised by her in turn. I believe the correct term for her is battleaxe. I was bummed because at first her character reminded me a bit of Amelia Peabody.Some of the things about the period charmed me; like the summer house rental. An estate really, with wings, stables and a gate house, complete with servants most of whom vamoosed when things started to get hairy. The old-fashioned conveyances; a mix at this time of history (1909) of trains, horse-drawn and motorized vehicles. Not sure what a Dragon Fly is, but I suspect it’s the author’s fancy since I found nothing on the web. When women fainted (as they invariably do in novels of this sort) someone ran for some ‘stimulants’. Aunt Rachel sports ‘wrinkle eradicators’ - mysterious and painful sounding. The lights went off at midnight because the electric company shuts down at that time. Funny stuff, but try as I might, the casual racism just took the shine off things for me. I know it’s how people thought and behaved back then, but it’s jarring to read about now. While I did finish it, I didn’t race through it because it was quite put-downable. In the end I just made myself finish the silly thing. It reminded me a lot of the way Nancy Drew mysteries unfolded. We’ve got a stock bunch of characters and they end up in a place where strange things start to happen to them. Not because of them, but because of their proximity to whatever else is going on. The events that occur happen to them, but they’re not of them if you know what I mean. There’s a subplot that must be discovered. Even the clues are funny compared to how things are written these days. In this one they’re basically all physical - a pistol, a cufflink, a golf stick (not club, stick). Oh and there are funny noises inside the house and mysterious intruders no one sees or is able to capture. The antics of not just the amateurs, but also of the cops to catch these unseen villains, were hilarious. They bumbled around and tripped over one another and never so much as caught the hem of a garment, much less an actual person. Obviously there was a secret room involved, but once again no one could find it; not the good guys or the bad guys. There had to be 5 holes carved into walls before someone found it and then it was on the second try. Dopes. Nancy Drew could have totally schooled these people.In the end, while I didn’t guess the solution (I wasn’t giving it any thought actually, the story didn’t really grab me enough), I found it a bit tired. I suppose since it’s a relatively early mystery, it wasn’t a cliche when it was written, but it certainly is now. It makes Agatha Christie’s work even more astounding because in my opinion it does hold its appeal. Yes, she wrote the bulk of her novels later than this one, but the earliest ones are pretty close to this time and they hold up much better. Alas, some vintage stories just don’t maintain their appeal into the 21st century.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rating: 3.75* of fiveThe Book Report: Miss Rachel Innes, spinster of circa-1908 Pittsburgh, inheritrix of two children now relatively safely launched into adulthood, and possessor of a large automobile, determines that her town residence needs significant tarting up and, to avoid the attendant chaos and disarray, moves herself, her ladies' maid, and her now-adult charges to Sunnyside, the large and vulgar country home of a local banker. As he, his wife, and his step-daughter (note old-fashioned spelling, it is relevant) are traveling to the almost foreign climes of California, Miss Innes and entourage are left in possession of Sunnyside (a more dramatic misnomer is hard to envision) for the entire summer that renovating Miss Innes's home will require. Perfect!Not so much.Miss Innes's maid begins the descent into spookyworld. Noises, disappearing people, mysterious presences, all cause her to think Sunnyside is haunted. Hah, says the commonsensical Miss Innes, there's a rational explanation for it all. And there is. Sadly enough.When people start dying, as in "no longer sucking air," Miss Innes gets a wee tidge tense. When the homeowner's step-daughter shows up, in a state of complete collapse and her ward's evident amour for the girl makes it impossible to turf her out, Miss Innes begins a logical and determined effort to explain the bizarre happenings at Sunnyside. Amid this tough-enough assignment comes the local banker's reported death from far-off California, the revelation that he embezzled A MILLION DOLLARS!! (a Madoff-sized payday in 1908), and the disappearance of the embezzled bank's head cashier (also the amour of Miss Innes's female ward), and the impossibility of keeping good staff conspire to give good Miss Innes many a sleepless night. In the end, all is well, and the redoubtable Miss Rachel Innes possesses all the facts.My Review: God bless her cotton socks, this lady is just a blast to read about! I like formidable old dowagers. (Lady Grantham aside.) They are so *certain* of their Rightness that it's fun to watch them screw up and fail. This being fiction, the formidable old dowager in question doesn't fail, and manages not to be any more overbearing, opinionated, and adamantine than is absolutely necessary.Rinehart was a decent writer, and a decent plotter, and so the book offers pleasures in both those measures. It's not going to make the Louise Pennyites abandon the Mistress to read only Rinehart. It's over a century old, and thrills and chills come at a dramatically different pace and price in our time. But frills and furbelows aside, a good figure is a good figure, and this book has a good figure.Visit your great-grandmother's world for a while. You might surprise yourself with how much you enjoy it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Mary Roberts Rinehart is one of my favorite writers from the early women writers of the early 20th century. This is a fun mystery with interesting charcters portraying the very, very wealthy class and their staff involved in a murder mystery. Rinehart was a unique legend in her time when women, especially the upper class woman, did not work and certainly did not write murder mysteries. Her books are always enjoyable, the characters sympathetic yet interesting and there is always a strong woman character to love. This is one of the better choices but my very favortie is The Yellow Room followed by the Swimming Pool. For a taste of early women mystery writers, Rinehart cannot be missed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Competent old school mystery. A few extra plot threads over the run of the mill title but not enough that I'd consider it exceptional.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Rachel Innis along with her niece and nephew rent a 20-room home for the summer. It doesn’t take long for things to go bump in the night. There are creaks and groans and footsteps and the hired help start fleeing like bats at dawn. A body is found at the foot of the staircase. The deceased is the son of the owner of the house. How did he get in? Why didn’t he knock or use his own key? Who shot him in the back? This book is one of those classics written in 1908. Reinhart wrote all stand-alone mysteries which is a shame because I found Rachel and her maid, Liddy, quite entertaining. The mystery had the slow cadence of that time period which was a bit of a struggle for a mystery fan who is used to today’s rapid fire slice and dice thrillers. There were some interesting things to learn about that time period, like how the electric company turns off the power at midnight. Reinhart has a surprising resume, having written 45 short stories in addition to her novels. THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE was her first mystery.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The plot of The Circular Staircase is, like the staircase of the title, rather roundabout. There are a lot of elements in this novel—murder, embezzlement, robbery, and arson, just t name a few of the crimes perpetrated by the characters in this book. Rachel Innes is a rather prickly middle-aged spinster and the aunt of Gertrude and Halsey. After renting a house in the countryside one summer, in which ghosts are said to live, a man is shot dead at the foot of the house’s circular staircase. The dead man is the son of the owner of the house, and he and Jack Bailey (a friend of Halsey’s who also happens to be engaged to Getrude) may or may not have been involved in a bank scandal.Rachel, who claims that the detecting gene is in her blood, spends the course of the novel pursuing clues, most of which are red herrings. It turns out that every person involved in this story has a piece of the puzzle; and Rachel spends most of the story saying “if only I had known…” The “Had I But Known” plot is apparently pretty characteristic of Rinehart’s novels, but in this book I kept feeling that Rachel as just moving in circles, never really solving any part of the mystery until the very last minute. Also, I didn’t particularly care for the narrator of the story: Rachel is so sharp-tongued that she’s actually rude to pretty much everybody at one point or another. Mr. Jamieson, the detective, is much more likeable, but he sometimes allows Rachel to walk all over him.Mary Roberts Rinehart has been credited with coining the phrase “the butler did it”—though the phrase never appeared in any of her mystery novels. Her books were bestsellers in the United States for a long while in the early 20th century, probably because they were so readable; certainly not “high literature” in an sense of the word. The Circular Staircase is a prime example of this; but nonetheless it works well as a suspense novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this Victorian "cozy". The most interesting thing is how none of the characters complied with the police - and that seemed to be o.k. The main character takes the murder weapon and then loses it and admits it all to the detective who finds it nothing more than inconvenient! Still a fun read.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Our detective is a crochety old lady who doesn't care much when her nephew runs over dogs with his motor-car. She gets all tangled up in a mystery, which is inevitable because of her stubbornness and whatnot. Standard old-lady mystery stuff. Secret romances, false identities, etc.