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The Bad Seed

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The Bad Seed

Written by: William March
Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
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About this listen

The best-selling novel that inspired Mervyn LeRoy's classic horror film about the little girl who can get away with anything - even murder.

There's something special about eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. With her carefully plaited hair and her sweet cotton dresses, she's the very picture of old-fashioned innocence. But when their neighborhood suffers a series of terrible accidents, her mother begins to wonder: Why do bad things seem to happen when little Rhoda is around?

Originally published in 1954, William March's final novel was an instant best seller and National Book Award finalist before it was adapted for the stage and made into a 1956 film. The Bad Seed is an indelible portrait of an evil that wears an innocent face, one which still resonates in popular culture today.

©1954 W. E. Campbell LLC; copyright renewed 1982 by W. E. Campbell LLC (P)2018 Tantor
Classics Horror Literary Fiction Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins Psychological Suspense Horror Fiction

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Excellent

Excellent narration and story, characters very believably etched, although basic premise flawed; an underrated classic.

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Moves nowhere. And slowly, at that.

The novel runs out of plot and steam after a point. Similar thoughts and introspections are repeated until you realise there is nothing more the book is going to offer. Surely it must have been very interesting at the time it was first published, but in our time when we have been subjected to so much of crime fiction and evolved plots of similar nature, this doesn't thrill any more.

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