THE MOONLIT DOOR

This is an almost perfect specimen of the Gothic novel which demands not only the suspension of disbelief but the surcease of intellectual activity of any kind. Mindlessly, we drifted through the moonlit doors--of the Villa Daphnis and the Chateau Sonnengarde, on the road to Maladieu where Rachel goes to meet Paul d'Arachenne, the man she misguidedly loves and finds dead. His mother, la Comtesse, accuses her; she is further victimized by anonymous letters; then there's Max Lambert, Paul's friend--she hates him, or does she really love him, and does he love her, or is it her adopted sister Lucia? You guess, in fact, you know, but it won't matter, since its utter predictability also accounts for a market. For ladies in retirement from reality.