Call me shallow, but one of my criteria for a good read is whether the text has a good opening line.

For example, my alltime favorite is the laconic "Call me Ishmael" that opens Herman Melville's immortal MOBY DICK. Despite the novel's long discursions into whaling lore, it is a cracking good yarn--fact-based, and in the character of Captain Ahab gave us the most enduring object lesson on the dangers of obsession, which leads Ahab and the crew of the Pequod to watery graves, with the whale they pursued still living and Ishmael like Job's servants: ". . .and I only am escaped alone to tell thee" (Job 1:15-19).

Then there's Charles Dickens's flat declaration "Marley was dead, to begin with" which opens A CHRISTMAS CAROL. He goes on to let us know "this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate" or words to that effect. He does have a point. That endless opening from A TALE OF TWO CITIES, often hailed as Dickens's best, frankly put me to sleep.

And then there is this gem, from Daphne du Maurier's classic REBECCA: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Du Maurier was the granddaughter of George du Maurier, who created one of the most sinister characters in all of English literature, the Hungarian hypnotist Svengali, in his novel TRILBY. His granddaughter followed suit in REBECCA's Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper at Manderley, whose devotion to Rebecca de Winter has such dire consequences.

The plot is quite simple, although some of the conceits and conventions used in the story are not: Maxim de Winter, the widowed master of the great Cornish estate of Manderley, is staying in Monte Carlo when he meets and marries a much younger woman, hitherto the paid companion of a thoroughly repulsive American called Mrs. Van Hopper. This second wife, whose Christian name is never given and who is the narrator of the story that follows, finds that his beloved Manderley is haunted by memories of Maxim's previous wife, Rebecca, who is presumed to have drowned when the boat she was sailing capsized; much is made in the early part of the book that Maxim actually identified a body found up the coast as that of Rebecca.

As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that everyone at Manderley was affected by Rebecca in unhealthy ways. Us hillbillies would say that Rebecca was no better than she should have been and not near as good as she ought have been; she was charming, cold, and above all promiscuous. Mrs. Danvers aided and abetted her in her infidelities; Maxim ignored them as best he could until Rebecca throws it up in his face that she is pregnant, probably by one of her lovers, and that he will raise the child as his own to avoid scandal. In this respect, du Maurier harks back to the Victorian ideal; but Maxim's response to the news is not Victorian at all. He shoots Rebecca through the heart and sinks her boat to hide his crime.

The second Mrs. de Winter, all this time, is terrorized by Mrs. Danvers--who actually tries to get her to commit suicide--and intimidated by the notion that Maxim is still madly in love with the dead Rebecca. Her reaction, when all is revealed, is also less than Victorian; she confesses herself relieved when she learns that Maxim hated his first wife.

Maxim is exonerated from a possible charge of murder when a gynecologist whom Rebecca had consulted--using Mrs. Danvers's name and without telling anyone else--reveals that Rebecca had been suffering from an inoperable cancer and would not have lived above six months, thus making suicide a more likely alternative explanation for her death than murder. This revelation does not prevent the final castastrophe though; Mrs. Danvers, apprised of the news by a former lover of Rebecca's, sets Manderley afire and disappears.

But all of those Gothic elements--a mysterious death, a haunted atmosphere--are encapsulated in that lovely opening line. Mrs. de Winter dreams not of the haunted Manderley she knew, but of the shell left by the fire; of the encroaching woods that crept back over the lawns and gardens once the estate was abandoned. She and Maxim are living in a little hotel in Switzerland and, in du Maurier's version, are content to be together, even though they cannot return to his beloved Manderley. Later "sequels" written by lesser writers than du Maurier posit just that, with one going so far as to send them back, Maxim to commit suicide out of guilt.

Still gives me the same chills I got the first time I read that line, and read it again, whispering it out loud: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

If anybody comes looking for me, I'll be in a corner somewhere with a book.