The Beetle (or The Beetle: A Mystery) is an 1897 horror novel by British writer Richard Marsh, in which a shape-shifting ancient Egyptian entity seeks revenge on a British member of Parliament. The novel initially sold more copies than Bram Stoker's Dracula, a similar horror story published in the same year. The novel begins by retelling an account of Robert Holt, a clerk who has been searching for a job all day. Denied food and water at a workhouse, he continues to walk in the dark through the rain until he comes upon an abandoned, dilapidated house with an open window. There he finds shelter and meets a monstrous figure, the mysterious Beetle.