I was grasped by an influence that froze me up. The cold and bony hand was on me; the blood in my veins thrilled and crept like the cold motion of a worm...I knew I was among the dead...

Written with the express desire to counter the comfortable familiarity with which ghost stories were being written, Fatal Revenge begins with an introduction by an anonymous Italian officer at the siege of Barcelona in 1697. From this dramatic beginning the story of the Montorios - a distinguished, though wild family from Naples with a murky and sensational past - unfolds. The Present Count Montorio, "dark, silent and solitary", has achieved wealth and position through the untimely death of the previous Count and his entire family in suspicious circumstances.

A harrowing romance in the Gothic tradition, populated by extravagant, often decadent characters, Fatal Revenge is founded exclusively on what Maturin described as the "passion of supernatural fear", in which the reader is never allowed to feel comfortable with the horrors or apparitions which haunt the Montario family.