Benson's second collection of ghost stories contains three powerful tales featuring the type of "spectres" that Benson seems to have been most haunted by: large ("Junonian," as he might say), attractive, cheerful, outgoing, middle-aged women. In "The Outcast" she is a reincarnation of Judas, in "Inscrutable Decrees" she is an emotional sadist and a murderer by omission, and in "Mrs. Amworth"—one of the best supernatural tales ever written—she is a conventional but nevertheless terrifying vampire. There are other good tales here too, particularly "Negotium Perambulans" (featuring a giant slug acting as an instrument of divine vengeance) and "Roderick's Story," that rare tale about a benign haunting that still produces a shiver and the consciousness of a world beyond. (Bill Kerwin)
Author
Edward Frederic "E. F." Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer. E. F. Benson was the younger brother of A.C. Benson, who wrote the words to "Land of Hope and Glory", Robert Hugh Benson, author of several novels and Roman Catholic apologetic works, and Margaret Benson, an author and amateur Egyptologist. Benson died during 1940 of throat cancer at the University College Hospital, London. He is buried in the cemetery at Rye, East Sussex. Last paragraph from Wikipedia
