2.5 stars? The third novel by Daphne Du Maurier. Still a few books before Rebecca. While the writing on a technical level has definitely improved from her first two, the main character was really unenjoyable to read. He is manipulative, gaslighting, abusive, lying, murderous, lacking compassion and any true human connection. He treats everything and everyone like a project to be completed, and when he can no longer control them, he destroys them. By the end of his life nothing has any meaning for him. It makes you wonder why Daphne wrote this book. A moral story about greed? An exercise in unlikeable and unreliable protagonists? I wouldn’t recommend this one to anyone other than Du Maurier completists.