JAMAICA INN

Sometimes I wonder why I'm wasting my time reading contemporary novelists when I can read classic authors such as Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989) who wrote this 1936 romantic suspense novel. This novel oozes with rich descriptive and apprehensive writing. If you are not familiar with Daphne then you haven’t read or seen the movie Rebecca. What about the movie The Birds? All three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This novel sets the tone on page one, “It was a cold grey day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a backing wind brought a granite sky and a mizzling rain with it, and although it was now only a little after two o’clock in the afternoon the pallour of a winter evening seemed to have closed upon the hills, cloaking them to mist. It would be dark by four. The air was clammy cold, and for all the tightly closed windows it penetrated the interior of the coach.” Now tell me...if you were riding inside that coach in Cornwall, England circa 1820, wouldn’t you feel chilled? That’s what I’m talking about; this lady can write. I know that I’ve said this many times, but once again...why can’t we produce novels of this enormity? Okay, so what is this mysterious, well written novel about?

Mary Yellan (23 years old) has lost her mother. She promised her mother that she would sell the farm and go to live with her Aunt Patience in Bodmin. Nobody has seen Patience since she married ten years ago. The last time they saw her she was pretty and giddy. As Mary took a coach to the Jamaica Inn where her aunt and Uncle Joss Merlyn lived, the coach driver warned her that no one stopped there anymore. He said, “they’re afraid.” She arrives on a damp and rainy night, only to find her aunt a poor tattered creature afraid of her husband. Her Uncle Joss is almost seven feet tall built on a gorilla frame. He tells her that he is the landlord of the Jamaica Inn and she is now his barmaid. Obviously, her aunt is terrified of him. Apparently, Joss bought the Inn from Squire Bassat under false pretenses. The inn has no guests and has a locked room down the upstairs passageway. What’s in that room? Uncle Joss leaves for a week and Mary walks among the moors and tors. Suddenly, Joss returns and declares the inn’s bar is open. The scum of the moors arrived. “They were dirty for the most part, ragged, ill kept, with matted hair and broken nails; tramps, vagrants, poachers, thieves, cattle stealers, and gypsies."

Mary is disgusted with what she sees. Uncle Joss tells her, “Keep your mouth shut and I’ll treat you like a lamb.” After she goes to her room, five wagons roll in and things are unloaded and dragged into the locked room down the passageway. Mary realizes that it’s probably smuggling or robbery on a grand scale. Mary heard a noise upstairs...was there a stranger listening the whole night? Was it Joss’s boss? Or was it Joss’s brother Jem? Mary heard one of the men in the bar protest, and it seemed to her that he was being hanged in the rafters. What kind of place is this? During time away from Joss, Mary takes long walks into the moors. She meets Joss’s brother, Jem, who says that he is a horse thief. What? Meanwhile the wagons come to the inn again, this time to pick up the cargo. After they leave, Squire Bassat arrives at the inn trying to catch them in the act. With Joss absent, the Squire breaks down the locked door and finds nothing. He asks Mary if she knows anything. She says no fearing retribution to her aunt from Joss. Joss comes back and is furious with the squire’s actions. He leaves on foot, Mary follows, but can’t keep up with his gait and gets lost in the rainy night. 

A stranger in a coach finds her. He is the albino vicar from Altarnun, Francis Davey. Mary tells him her story and he takes her to his home in Altarnum to feed her and dry her off. The vicar takes her back to the inn. Uncle Joss stays drunk for five days. Mary takes another long walk and runs into Jem again. He wants to take her to Launceston on Christmas Eve. She agrees. Is Mary falling in love with Jem? In town, they kiss, but Mary will not stay in town with him. He says that he will get the buggy and take her home. He doesn’t come back. Now she is trapped in town in the pouring rain eleven miles from the Jamaica Inn. She tries to find Jem to no avail. Maybe he was arrested trying to sell the pony he stole from the Squire back to Mrs. Bassat. Are you having fun yet? As Mary attempts the eleven mile walk in the rain to the inn, the vicar’s coach comes by and he gives her a lift. Mary puts on the vicar’s heavy rug and takes off her clothes to dry. He questions her on the journey, but gets off in his town and instructs his driver to take her to the Jamaica Inn. When the coach is three miles from the inn, all hell breaks loose. Joss’s gang shoot the driver of the coach and pull it over. They are drunk and on a Christmas Eve gallop to the coast to wreck a ship. They take a terrified Mary with them.

The next two hundred pages, or so, are brilliantly written in a descriptive manner that makes the reader think he/she is there. There are many twists and turns as you progress through this book, but I got lucky and figured out who was really the boss of the gang of ship wreckers. Maybe you will too. This is a must read if you are into reading serious British mystery writers, such as, Daphne Du Maurier. I highly recommend this novel and as a matter of fact recommend all of Du Maurier’s novels.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Wikipedia says, “wrecking is the practice of taking valuables from a shipwreck, which has foundered close to shore.” But Joss Merlyn’s gang took that practice one step further, “The term is also used to describe the practice of decoying ships onto coasts using tricks (e.g., false lights), so that they run ashore and can be plundered.” In the novel, not only did they plunder the ships, but they also drowned anyone still alive. They rode back to the Jamaica Inn knowing that there were not any witnesses left to alert the law.

Daphne Du Maurier actually got the idea for this novel after a stay at the Jamaica Inn (yes, it really exists). As a matter fact, The Jamaica Inn is still doing a robust business and is known as Cornwall’s Most Famous Smuggling Inn.