Due to Goodreads not allowing for half stars, I rounded this up from 3.5 stars to 4.

I am very happy with this book though I am not as enamored with all of the tales that it contained. I am participating in the Dead Writers Society challenge related to literary birthdays.

The Tell-Tale Heart-(5 stars)
What can you really say about an unnamed narrator who is obviously insane though he lays out reasons why he is not while exposing himself as a murderer to the police. I think this is one of the reasons why this story is so unsettling. You have the narrator in a matter of fact way lay out the reasons why he is killing the "old man" and you realize this person has to be a lodger in his home. To read how he systematically dismembers the body and hides it under the floorboards is cringe inducing.

The Cask of Amontillado-(4.5 stars)
A question for the ages will surely be what the heck did Fortunado do that caused him to be chained and walled up by Montresor. Poor Fortunado driven by his own greed to taste the Amontillado finds himself chained and walled up in a number of hours. Frankly if Fortunado had been a little less drunk, he may have realized there was a warning by Montresor for what was to come when they were discussing the latter's family coat of arms (thank goodness for my dictionary since I had no idea what the saying meant).

The Masque of the Red Death- (3.5 stars)
This one was a random story that I still have never really gotten. I thought it was so strange that Prince Prince Prospero's says to himself well there is a Red Death killing everyone, let's party. Also who decides to decorates seven rooms and makes one of them super evil? The description of the seventh room was very creepy and I thought very well done. In the end, the elite got what was coming to them and the Red Death reigned supreme.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue-(2.5 stars)
Definitely one of my least favorite of the short stories. This thing goes on way too long. C. Auguste Dupin is supposedly the literary predecessor to Sherlock Holmes many say. I say that Sherlock was never this aggravating when solving a crime. The first 10 pages of this story I seriously started to nod off. There was way too many extraneous details in this one. And then when we get to the gruesome murders, ugh. My poor stomach. The solution was 100 percent ridiculous by the way.

The Purloined Letter- (2.5 stars)
Another C. Auguste Dupin story that seriously just meanders before he finally tells the unnamed narrator/sidekick how he figured out where the purloined letter was and how he managed to obtain it. At one point I even said to myself, who cares where the letter is, just let the story end.

The Pit and the Pendulum- (3 stars)
I know that I should be feeling much more disturbed by this story, instead I felt like it was at least 20 pages too long. An unnamed narrator is taken by the Spanish Inquisition and instead of being asked any questions seems to be in an experiment to see what he will do when faced with death by pendulum or death by pit. Taken up the last portion of the book, the story just keeps going and going and going. Let us not even get into why in the world would the Spanish Inquisition have something like this set up.

To sum, I only really loved two stories, tolerated two, and felt okay about the two. ( )

And still above them all my favourite tale is The Pit and the Pendulum. I also had it for free from the amazon store ( 100 happiness). ( )