A close second is Bram Stoker's Dracula. Again this is a style issue. It starts out very, very slow. It gets exciting in the middle and then he ends the thing as if he couldn't think of a way to end the story. There is none of the battle or stuff that is featured in movies. They catch up to the carriage, beating the sun, turnover the casket and cut off his head. The whole climax occurs in a paragraph.
You'd have a blast with some Chaucer or even older, Beowulf.
