Not since "Wuthering Heights" have we had a horror story that so completely satisfies all the requirements of the genre [as does "Hatter's Castle"]. Hatter's Castle is the home of a great, blustering, egocentric paranoiac, a hatter in a small Scottish town fifty years ago. James Brodie is convinced of his noble birth; he is a large, handsome man, domineering, brutal, deluded with visions of his own grandeur. The tale of his downfall, which is brought about by the destruction or death of every member of his family save one, makes the book. At the end he is a skeleton of his former self, destroyed by drink, by the failure of his last hope, by his own vast, vain aspirations and desires. (p. 113)

This, of course, is not a cheery tale. But the horror story is meant not to cheer but to harrow, and Mr. Cronin has faithfully...