A FICTION HOUSE PRESS FACSIMILE REPRINT:
"The House With a Bad Name" is one of the most intriguing mystery romances that has appeared for many a day. Sheehan writes so well that one has the impression of watching a play. The characters stand out clear cut, each scene is brought out vividly.
The author has daringly located a house of mystery in a New York suburb and peopled it with the most romantic people imaginable. One falls in love with the heroine at a glance; admires her chivalrous father and wants to shake the hand of the faithful butler.
Melissina Tyrone is as quaint and lovely a heroine as ever graced the pages of a novel. Eugene Buckhannon loses his heart to her the moment she steps through the doorway of the mysterious house on Cinnamon street--the house with a bad name--enveloped in a secret which grows tenser and more baffling with each chapter.
Once at dead of night a mysterious coffin was carried from the weird, whispery dwelling. Partridge the butler knows about it. But Partridge has a great secret--one of such vital meaning to Melissina that he acknowledges a false accusation of embezzlement rather than disclose it. To tell the entire plot would be to spoil in part the treat waiting for the reader.
One of the characters is a mysterious woman in black. She is so well portrayed that the verse, "The blue-eyed vampire, sated at her feast, smiles bloodily against the leprous moon," quoted by another character, seems appropriate in description. The book contains nothing forbidding or gruesome, however, but is really a beautiful romance in an appropriate setting.
