The Crime and the Criminal

"The Crime and the Criminal" by Richard Marsh is a novel written in the late 19th century. The story centers around Thomas Tennant, whose life spirals into chaos after a violent incident involving a woman on a train. As Tennant grapples with the implications of this encounter and the shadow of potential crime, he faces ominous interactions with a blackmailer who holds critical information about the event. At the start of the novel, Thomas Tennant travels alone from Brighton, leaving behind a troubled family situation. His journey takes a dark turn when a woman, who he once believed to be dead, unexpectedly confronts him in the train compartment. Their ensuing quarrel results in her falling from the moving train, leading to her tragic death. Conflicted by his chaotic emotions and a sense of fear, Tennant attempts to conceal the situation, which ignites a series of harrowing events involving blackmail and accusations as he struggles to maintain his innocence while protecting his family from the fallout. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the English author born Richard Bernard Heldmann. A best-selling and prolific author of the late 19th century and the Edwardian period, Marsh is best known now for his supernatural thriller novel The Beetle, which was published the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and was initially even more popular, outselling Dracula six times over. The Beetle remained in print until 1960. Marsh produced nearly 80 volumes of fiction and numerous short stories, in genres including horror, crime, romance and humour. Many of these have been republished recently, beginning with The Beetle in 2004. Marsh's grandson Robert Aickman was a notable writer of short "strange stories".