Murder on the Cliffs (Daphne du Maurier, Book 1) [Hardcover]

Joanna Challis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 24, 2009

The storm led me to Padthaway.

I could never resist the allure of dark swirling clouds, windswept leaves sweeping down cobbled lanes or a view of the sea stirring up its defiant nature. The sea possessed a power all of its own and this part of Cornwall, an isolated stretch of rocky cliff tops and unexplored beaches both enchanted and terrified me.

It is not a lie to say I felt drawn out that day, led to a certain destiny...

So begins this new mystery series featuring young Daphne du Maurier, headstrong, adventurous, and standing at the cusp of greatness.

Walking on the cliffs in Cornwall, she stumbles upon the drowned body of a beautiful woman, dressed only in a nightgown, her hair strewn along the rocks, her eyes gazing up to the heavens. Daphne soon learns that the mysterious woman was engaged to marry Lord Hartley of Padthaway, an Elizabethan mansion full of intriguing secrets.

As the daughter of the famous Sir Gerald du Maurier, Daphne is welcomed into the Hartley home, but when the drowning turns out to be murder, Daphne determines to get to the bottom of the mysteries of Padthaway—in part to find fresh inspiration for her writing, and in part because she cannot resist the allure of grand houses and long buried secrets.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Australian author Challis's U.S. debut, the uneven first in a new series to feature literary icon Daphne du Maurier as sleuth, 21-year-old Daphne, who's visiting Cornwall to research local history, encounters a teenage girl, Lianne Hartley, leaning over a beautiful young woman's body on the beach during a storm. Lianne reluctantly identifies the dead woman as Victoria Bastion, a former kitchen maid who was about to marry Lianne's brother. Daphne soon meets other members of the aristocratic Hartley family, whose complex relationships and great house, an Elizabethan mansion called Padthaway, fascinate her. When Daphne learns that Victoria died by poison rather than accident, she vows to solve the mystery of her murder. Despite a clunky plot and some labored prose (Sea spray foamed at the mouth of the restless sea), Challis (Eye of the Serpent) gives du Maurier fans an appealing vision of the novelist's early womanhood and the inspiration for her classic Rebecca.(Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

JOANNA CHALLIS lives and writes in Australia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (November 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1615238735
• ISBN-13: 978-0312367145
• ASIN: 0312367147
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worse than an old Paperback Library Gothic, February 1, 2010

By 

U.N. Owen (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder on the Cliffs (Daphne du Maurier, Book 1) (Hardcover)

Last night I dreamt I went to Padthaway again. And once was more than enough, believe me!

This is dreadfully written. It's thoroughly BAD. Capital letters are intentional here. It's textbook BAD. Here is yet another example of a book that had an absent editor. What on earth do editors do these days anyway? Does the quality of the writing even matter? Is the popular fiction market made up of nothing but this gimmicky drivel? Here are some examples of the atrocious writing you will suffer through should you attempt to read Murder on the Cliffs:

SINS #1, 2, 3 & 4 : POOR PUNCTUATION, AWKWARD SYNTAX, REDUNDANCY and ODD WORD CHOICES
"An impossibility, for the Lady Hartleys of this world did not mix with those considered belowstairs and Ewe, as a former professional nurse, exuded the working tab abhorrent to her ladyship."
[Incoherent. Remove the clauses and it makes no sense. Therefore, badly punctuated. Proof of an absent or lazy (or incompetent?) editor. A "professional" nurse as opposed to an "amateur" nurse? The book is littered with redundancies like this.]

SIN #5: RUN-ON SENTENCE MANIA, OVERUSE OF FANCY VERBS RATHER THAN USING THE WORD SAID
"Oh she's always been willful," divulged Ewe in a confessional manner to her good friend Mrs. Penmark after Ewe had shepherded me out of the cottage for our afternoon visit to a baker's wife."
[Every other line of dialogue in the book is followed by similar run-on sentences rather than making it a completely separate sentence as it should be. Characters don't talk in this book, they "divulge" and "translate" and "squawk" and "summon" and "warn." They "warn" quite often - about every three pages or so.]

SIN #6: PURPLE PROSE
"All around, water trickled from a series of white Greek mythological fountains, the dark stone cobbled flooring winding itself through a maze of massive potted plants placed at strategic points for circular harmony."
[I'd call Challis' writing style Fuchsia Fiction rather than Purple Prose.]

SIN# 7: THE HUH? SENTENCE
"Having entered the house without a backward glance, Lady Hartley had assumed I'd follow, but Sir Edward had a different plan."

I thought this was a novice writer's debut. But guess what? Challis has written four other novels all of them Gothic romances. I can only suspect that they have been published by a vanity press. The story is a knock-off of du Maurier's far superior masterpiece Rebecca. This can be the only reason it has been published. Another gimmicky historical mystery that will hopefully make a bit of cash for St. Martin's Press. And that is the reason I wanted to read this book. I think Rebecca has one of the best villainess characters in all of mystery fiction. So I kept waiting for Mrs. Trehearn to be this book's Mrs. Danvers. But Trehearn barely appears in what I managed to read. She must get her big scenes later in the book and I gave up around page 80. Instead I had to endure a precocious 15 year-old girl (supposedly emotionally disturbed but I never got that) teaming up with 21 year-old du Maurier. They bored me. So did Lady Hartley, Sir Edward, Lord David - clearly the Maxim de Winter knock-off who broods and sulks like a pre-adolescent. I especially loathed Ewe Sinclaire with her cliché working class dialect and idioms and her irritating habit of calling everyone by their initials (Sir E, Mrs. B, etc.). And seriously... Ewe? The female sheep? Who on Earth names anyone Ewe? Even for a fictional character it's an absurd choice! There is another character called Perony Osborn. Since this book is in the mode of a 1960s Paperback Library Gothic I guess these kinds of character names are to be expected. I kept rolling my eyes.

Avoid this book as you would an infectious disease. I predict this book will be in the remainder piles by Spring 2010.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ludicrous, April 8, 2010

By 

Unstricken - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder on the Cliffs (Daphne du Maurier, Book 1) (Hardcover)

I've read a lot of bad mysteries. Often, I abandon them after the first ten pages. This is the first mystery I ever kept reading because I was morbidly fascinated by just how poorly it was written. I can't believe Minotaur published this book! Is the author blackmailing someone at the company? I laughed out loud several times while reading this compilation of basic writing errors. Misplaced modifiers, bizarre word choice, inconsistent and inexplicable behavior by the characters, historical anachronisms, nonsensical dialogue, plot holes--this book has *everything.*

Fortunately, I got this book from a library; I would have felt cheated had I spent a nickel on it at a garage sale.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars couldn't get past the fulsome prose, January 2, 2010

By 

bookloverFLA (south of Sarasota FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder on the Cliffs (Daphne du Maurier, Book 1) (Hardcover)

I could not get past the first chapter and have learned that if an author can't get it right by then it's time to quit.
Really purple prose, way too many adjectives, "the sacred beauty of the house" (this is the first time she sees it).
Jane Austen it isn't.
Others will love it I'm sure but not me.