Books: About Great-Great-Grandma

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MARY ANNE (351 pp.)—Daphne du Maurier—Doubleday ($3.50).

Daphne du Maurier, 46, is one of the slickest pros now producing bestseller belles-lettres. She dips her pen into the inkpot of romance, melodrama or suspense and aims it like a dagger at the heart of the defenseless reader, who is usually quite willing to hold still for her.

Those who dodged such books as Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, were probably nailed by the movie versions.

Novelist du Maurier's 18th book, a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection for July and a cinch to be both a bestseller and a movie, will not be escaped by many—and many may not want to escape.

Mary Anne is the story of a high-class trollop, but the sex is discreetly offered between the lines instead of between the sheets. The heroine reaches the pinnacle of her profession when she becomes the darling of the Duke of York, second son of George III and commander in chief of the army. But her stipend is lean, and she fattens it by peddling army commissions. When her c. in c. cashiers her for conduct unbecoming a mistress, she avenges herself by causing one of the juiciest scandals ever aired in the House of Commons. Her noble victim manages at least to stop her from writing her memoirs about him by making a cash & carry settlement. But Mary Anne, casting a Cassandra-like glance into the future, hopefully murmurs: "The promise [binds] only myself, and not my heirs."

It therefore does not bind Daphne du Maurier, who has written lively fiction and close-to-life history about Mary Anne Clarke, her great-great-grandmother.