Randolph "Dilda" Carter

I finished Wieland, a novel so bizarre it is difficult to believe it was written in the 1790's. There is madness, mass murder, mayhem, gore, ghostly voices and apparitions, and a strong female protagonist (Brown was a rare, for his time, male advocate for women's rights). It has one of the strangest endings you will ever encounter (I won't ruin it for you). It seems unlikely that Poe did not see this novel since it seems his work is a logical extension from it.Arthur Mervyn is definitely the weakest offering in this collection of three novels. Overlong and full of the most outrageous and unlikely coincidences. Reads like a crappy Dickens novel. Mervyn is the most unbelievably good and honest person ever fictionalized. He spend pages justifying the most outrageous behavior, like aiding a murderer, to convince the reader of his above board motives. Everyone lives happily ever after, except for the scores that committed suicide, or were murdered, or died in prison, or died of yellow fever.Edgar Huntly is not a bad novel but it can't decide what it wants to be. It starts out as a pretty compelling mystery, but mid-book turns into a story about the Indian Wars. There is a minor sleep walking theme throughout the book, but this isn't obvious until the very end. Once again the novel is littered with the most unlikely coincidences. I think I read that Brown wrote this in two parts at different times so that partly accounts for the shift in theme. A decent read and not overly long.I would only recommend Wieland. This can be found in the public domain, so there is no need to shell out $25 for this novel if you don't mind an ebook copy..