This, the earliest of Hammond Innes's sea stories is a fairly typical WWII adventure story, with a pair of fairly ordinary Englishmen thwarting the nefarious designs of Nazi spies. It was written, however, during the very earliest weeks of the war and is extraordinarily prescient; the threat to s...
Really strong plot line to this book, writing style can seem a little old-fashioned compared to modern day thrillers but it still worked well enough for me. The only criticism I would really point out is Innes' clumsy dialogue, especially when he attempts to write in cockney for one of the main c...
The Strode Venturer shares many of the elements of Solomon's Seal , a failing shipping line operating in isolated territories, a feud between members of a family an exotic island setting and a group of people seeking to gain their independance form a government they see as oppressive. The Strode...
It was a solid 3.5 stars in my opinion so I rounded up to 4 stars. The writing style and the story itself are reflective of a British author and post-World War II Europe respectively. The intrigue surrounding a haul of Nazi gold that was hidden away in the Italian Dolomites brings together a pr...
Reading this Hammond Innes novel immediately after Golden Soak reveals that by the latter part of his career Innes had hit on a formula. Take a middle aged Englishman with no ties, produce an attractive younger woman in need of some help, set up an issue of survival in an exotic location and weav...
Ian Ferguson learns that his father's death was precipated by an S.O.S. radioed from the Labrador peninsula. The mystery is that the message came from a man believed to be dead, victim of a fiery crash during an earlier geological expedition.Ian sets out across Canada's desolate north. Here he un...
Alec Falls attempts desperately to regain his fortune by tackling the region's fabled McIlroy's Monster: a mine with enough promise of trapped ore to destroy as many men as it seduces into attempting its secrets.The mine becomes Alec's obsession. As he plunges blindly into the morass, his charact...
A sailing yacht, crossing the English Channel at night, is nearly run down by the Mary Deare: an aging freighter seemingly abandoned but still under power. The yachts men are small-time salvage divers, and one (dreaming of a contract with her owners, and a check from their insurers) climbs aboard...
I am surprised this book is not better known, because it is not only Hammond Innes's most complex and literary book, but an excellent novel in any company. It is concerned with the origins of man and with early man's similarities with his modern counterpart, and has a troubled father-son relation...
"Attack Alarm" is one of Hammond Innes early works. Published in 1941 it was written when he was assigned to an anti-aircraft artillery unit during the Battle of Britain at RAF Kenley (RAF airbase) in 1940. So to say that this novel has the "ring of authenticity" would be an understatement. I am ...
This book farted in my mouth in the first chapter. It spent a few chapters trying to convince me that I was actually enjoying a nice ice cream sunday, but by about chapter 5 there was no doubt that the taste in my mouth was indeed fart.The front cover makes promises that "she was beautiful and d...
I am so glad I picked up this book. The attention to detail is amazing, and it is obvious that the author has experienced what he is writing about. As the setting was so well described and the content so interesting I didnt realise until quite near the end that I was slightly confused as to wha...
During the war, Iain Ross had been disgraced, and then drowned at sea -- or so his family believed. But a curious mission takes his brother Donald to the Hebrides to meet a Major Braddock, and he finds the man who was once his brother living a new life in a dead man's name. Braddock is running th...
Color Plates Foreword Part 1: Ferdinand & Isabella Part 2: Cortes Prelude to conquest The march to Mexico The Aztecs The enigma of Moctezuma Defeat & conquest Part 3: Pizarro The gold seekers Expeditions to the Andes The Incas Massacre, gold & civil war Part 4: The aftermath Author's Notes Ackno...
She piled the fire high, gave us a huge breakfast, and left us alone with a chess set that had belonged to her husband. Neither of us had played chess for a long time. We played all day, while the rain lashed at the windows and the gale shook the house. We spent the night there for we knew there ...
The place was no longer just an ordinary shack town that was gradually falling into ruin. The desolation seemed suddenly to have a menace of its own. It had become something alive and positive. The hardness of the mountains seemed to have moved in among the dark shapes crouched against the glimme...
Perhaps I clung to her as the only reality left to me, so that my mood of depression was overlaid by a sense of urgency. What had happened to me in Hull had made me realize I was dealing with people who did not make idle threats. It was dawn when we arrived in Musselburgh. I got a bus into Edinbu...
The chief engineer was back, sitting beside Rod Selkirk with a beer in front of him, but not talking now. Sadeq wasn’t there, nor was Baldwick. The steward began sounding a gong as the captain went straight to his place at the head of the table. The others followed, and when we were all seated, t...
It was that bright, rather brittle sunshine that goes with February and an east wind. The sky was a light chilly blue and cloudless, and its colour was reflected in the water, which lay everywhere on the low ground. The fields, as they streamed past, looked sodden, but their green gave promise of...
At the harbour end I turned right, then right again on to the approach road to the naval barracks. The naval quay is a large open space used occasionally as a parade ground. Yachts are allowed to be lifted out and laid up there, and there was still quite a line of them not yet in the water. The c...