Whodunit?

MY COUSIN RACHEL (348 pp.)--Daphne du Maurier--Doubleday ($3.50).

An up & coming British officer named Frederick Browning* confided to a boat builder in the late '30s that he hoped to buy a boat if his wife's next book turned out a success. No man ever had a sounder basis for hope. His wife is Novelist Daphne du Maurier, and the book she was working on was called Rebecca.

The latest Du Maurier novel, My Cousin Rachel (her tenth in 20 years), is no Rebecca, but it is still the stuff of which dreamboats are made. The movies have already bought it for a reported $100,000, and the Literary Guild has made it the February choice. In the current story market, neither could have made a wiser move. My Cousin Rachel is that comparatively rare thing in present-day writing, an expert blend of suspense, shrewd realism and romantic hokum.

What, or who, killed Cousin Ambrose at that sinister villa in Florence? Was it a "hereditary" brain tumor? Or was it Rachel, his half-Italian, half-English bride? Ambrose, a confirmed bachelor and English country gentleman, had gone to Florence for his health, wound up as a bubbling, then a fearful, husband. To Philip, his heir in Cornwall, it all seemed plain as day: Rachel and her sinister adviser Rainaldi had murdered Cousin Ambrose. Then Rachel came to Cornwall on a visit and, in no time, her cute tricks had Philip dancing attendance like a puppet. But when Philip began to get headaches and nearly died, the old questions returned. Was it brain sickness or poison? Why did Rainaldi show up? Why did Cousin Rachel allow Philip to think she would marry him, and then back out when he had signed over the estate? The scene is the Rebecca country 100 years or more ago, the atmosphere is Gothic, the suspense is played out like Florentine silk cord, and the ending comes where most mysteries begin. Put it all together and it spells the first big bestseller of 1952.

*Who later, as Major General Browning, became chief of Britain's Air-Borne Command in World War II, and now, as Lieut. General Sir Frederick Browning, serves as Controller of Princess Elizabeth's household.

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