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I found Rebecca a difficult book to get to grips with at first, as it's not really my genre of novel, but all turned out fine in the end, with some truly memorable moments that sets it apart from your average mystery. It’s a melodrama of sorts, but by no means short on bangs and crashes. There are two sunken ships, a murder, a disastrous fire, a costume party, plus (and this really is the novel's strength) multiple complex betrayals. And yet it’s startling to realise how much of its drama never actually happens. The sign of a talented storyteller? Indeed. The second Mrs de Winter might not excel at much, but she is among the great dreamers of English literature. Whole pages go by devoted to her imaginings and speculations. The effect is curiously unstable, not so much a story as a network of possibilities, in which the reader is rapidly entangled and held under a blanket of mystery. She first meets the dashing yet unhappy Max de Winter while working as a lady’s companion in a grand hotel in Monte Carlo. The girl is anxious, observant, dreamy, terribly romantic, a perennial fantasist whose fears and insecurities bloom out of control when she becomes mistress of the haunting Manderley. Here enters the spooky and wicked housekeeper Mrs Danvers, and this sets the scene for a novel of incredible suspense. No wonder Hitchcock wanted to make the movie. I watched the film long ago, so it didn't spoil what was a blazing read!