Jamaica Inn

Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn sends Mary Yellan across the Cornish moors after her mother's death to live with Aunt Patience and Patience's husband, Joss Merlyn. The inn they keep is isolated and avoided by respectable travelers. Mary soon finds her aunt frightened, Joss violently controlling, and the building used at night by men whose business depends on secrecy.

Determined to protect Patience, Mary watches the inn's locked rooms and unexplained arrivals and learns that smuggling is only part of the danger. Her contacts beyond the inn do not offer simple safety: Jem Merlyn is Joss's unpredictable brother, and the local clergyman Francis Davey becomes another interpreter of the moor and its threats. Mary must judge people in a landscape where appearances are deliberately staged.

The novel combines adventure with Gothic confinement. Follow how weather, roads, darkness, and architecture limit Mary's movement and sharpen her independence. Du Maurier makes the moor both a real terrain and a field of uncertain loyalties. This account reveals the criminal use of the inn but withholds the later betrayals, the complete wrecking scheme, and Mary's final escape.