The Beetle is told from the point of view of four narrators: Robert Holt, Sydney Atherton, Marjorie Lindon, and Augustus Champnell.

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.

The Beetle plans to send Holt to the home of Paul Lessingham, a member of the House of Commons, to steal the letters from the drawer in his desk.

The narrative perspective switches to Sydney Atherton, who turns out to be Paul Lessingham's romantic rival for the affection of Marjorie Lindon.

As Lessingham is about to leave, he sees a picture of a scarab on a shelf and enters a catatonic state, similar to what happened to him when Holt uttered "the Beetle."

That night, Atherton goes to a ball and manages to secure financing for his experiments from a woman named Dora Grayling.

Atherton is then approached by his friend, Percy Woodville, whom he takes to the House of Commons to hear Lessingham speak.

Marjorie tells him about a half-naked and starving man (Holt) she brought to her house yesterday without her father's knowledge after finding him lying in the street.

Although neither speaks openly about it, they agree that Lessingham is haunted, and that if he ensures Lindon won't be dragged into it, Atherton will give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his innocence.

In her temple, Lessingham was put into a hypnotic state and forced to obey the orders of the high priestess, called the Woman of the Songs.

Having returned to the house after losing sight of the hypnotized Holt, he discovered that Lindon was missing; he asks Champnell for help in finding her.

Champnell theorises that the Beetle intends to return to Egypt and that the man was Lindon, dressed in Holt's old clothes.

At the local police station, the men learn that a man who was previously in the company of an "Arab" has been found murdered.

As for the children of Isis, Champnell has learned from good sources that, during an expeditionary advance to Dongola, a temple and its occupants - victims of an explosion - were discovered.

Robert Holt: An unemployed clerk who unknowingly enters the house of the Beetle and is forced into his service through hypnosis.

Research on this text is both abundant and diverse, focusing on narrative and genre, imperialism, alterity, gender performativity, and identity.

Scholars such as Minna Vuohelainen, Jack Halberstam,[5] and Roger Luckhurst[citation needed] have discussed The Beetle as an example of the gothic genre.

At the same time, scholars like Rhys Garnett[6] and Victoria Margree began to develop critical arguments that balanced a discussion of imperialism with Victorian anxieties about gender and sexuality.

Themes, motifs, and plot elements such as found-documents, crime, police work, engagement with ancient cultures, complicated love triangles, the uncanny, and monstrosity also point to a strong connection with the gothic mystery genre.

[citation needed] Some scholars, such as Victoria Margree, place The Beetle in the context of imperialism, colonisation, or sovereignty.

[citation needed] The Beetle returns to haunt British MP Paul Lessingham, who killed a priestess from the cult of Isis in Egypt twenty years before.

Modern scholars such as Ailise Bulfin have attempted to separate appropriated cultural tradition from ambiguity of the text in order to make productive historical arguments about British Imperialism reflected in the novel's genre.

For example, Bulfin points to the creation of the Suez Canal and the specifically Egyptian context the novel provides to understand imperial anxieties in Victorian England.

[8] Leslie Allin,[9] Kristen Davis,[10] Dawn Vernooy and W.C. Harris,[11] and Victoria Margree[7] have contributed to a critical understanding of how gender and sexuality interact with interpretive statements about genre, narrative, and realm.

This has helped queer theorists like Thomas Stuart to destabilize assumptions about the social construction of gender in Victorian England.

[12] In particular, the Beetle demands that Holt undresses before taking the form of an ailing male figure with a complicated female presence and then kissing him.

Sydney Atherton is another complicated character, obsessed with his own masculinity in comparison to his romantic rival Lessingham.

In addition, Marjorie Lindon defies the expectations of the female gender by refusing to be controlled by the male characters in the novel, whether they are members of her family or seeking her affection.

[citation needed] Thomas Stuart,[12] Anna Maria Jones,[13] and Graeme Pedlingham[14] have made connections between the indeterminacy they perceived in The Beetle and new materialisms.

[13] In November 1919, the British silent film, The Beetle, directed by Alexander Butler and starring Maudie Dunham and Hebden Foster, was released.