Harriet has long been famous as one of the most powerful chillers ever written. Without blood, without violence, with nothing supernatural or melodramatic, it is filled with pure horror. Very quickly, the reader realizes that the charming people who surround Harriet are likely to become ruthless murderers. And this knowledge doubles the interest in each character. The hapless mother, who is vainly trying to prove that the guilty are guilty, is pitted against the cold-blooded, inexorable and twisted minds of her own relatives. The quiet, suffocating and thoughtless cruelty which the innocent and passionate Harriet suffers seems almost unbearable, until the dreadful climax is reached.