Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

Stark and forbidding, Jamaica Inn stands alone on bleak Bodmin Moor, its very walls tainted with corruption. Young Mary Yellan soon learns of her uncle Joss Merlyn’s strange trade here – but does he deal in blacker secrets still?

As her suspicions and her terror increase, she looks in vain for help from the fearful Cornish people. Only in the Vicar of Altarnun does she find a friend – and in the oddly likeable horse-thief they call the worst Merlyn of them all…

And, as the drama in this famous gothic masterpiece heightens, Mary must choose which to trust.

Jamaica Inn is the first book I can remember reading where I was totally gripped by the first chapter. Mary is travelling by carriage through Bodmin Moor on a bleak winter’s day to live with her aunt and uncle after her parents’ deaths. The chapter is filled with apprehension, exacerbated by the remnants of Mary’s grief. Du Maurier vividly evokes the wild, expansive moors which provide the backdrop not only to Mary’s unhappy journey but also to the rest of the book.

Mary does hold one flicker of hope – that her aunt and uncle will be a source of comfort. She is alarmed and disappointed when she arrives at Jamaica Inn to find that it is dark and neglected, that her aunt is a timid shell of the aunt Mary remembers, living in the shadow of Mary’s uncle Joss, an alcoholic with a violent temper.

Mary is effectively trapped at Jamaica Inn. She has no support network, no way to get away without risking her uncle’s anger, and in any case she has nowhere to go.

As she spends more time at Jamaica Inn, Mary begins to suspect that her uncle is even more sinister than she thought. It all comes to a head one terrifying night when she is stranded on the moors and then witnesses her uncle’s horrifying crimes at the edge of the Cornish cliffs.

Du Maurier’s imagination is at its best here. Just when you think the plot is not capable of becoming any more chilling, she manages to think of something that moves the gothic goalposts. At times the events in this book quite literally made my hairs stand on end, and du Maurier keeps us guessing until the end about the true nature of some of the characters.

She also evokes the bleaker side of Cornwall with expertise. Many of us know it as an idyllic summer holiday destination and it is easy to forget that in a winter storm it is surrounded by crashing waves, the wind whipping through the wild moors and howling down the chimneys. Now imagine that with nothing but a candle to light the dark, panelled passageways of Jamaica Inn, fearing what might lie around the corner…