Desmond Bagley 's The Golden Keel

The Golden Keel appeared in 1963 and launched Desmond Bagley on a successful career as a writer of thrillers. To me Bagley is the guy whose books you read when you’ve run out of Alistair MacLean books to read. Bagley’s style is similar, he’s not as good as MacLean, but he’s OK.

The Golden Keel had a contemporary setting but the early part of the story is told in a series of flashbacks, and even flashbacks within flashbacks. The technique works since the past is always a presence in this story. What happened back in 1948 is important, and what happened back in 1943 is absolutely crucial. But exactly what did happen in 1943? It’s a story told by a drunk and might be nothing more than a tall story. Or it might be true. Or partly true.

The narrator is English yacht designer Peter Halloran who had headed for South Africa after the war ended. He prospered there and eventually came to be the owner of a very successful boat-building business. He had everything he wanted out of life, and then suddenly something happened and it no longer meant anything to him. And then he encountered the drunk, a man named Walker, once again. He is now convinced that Walker’s story is true and he intends to do something about. It will be an adventure and he may rediscover a reason to go on living.

Walker had been an Allied prisoner-of-war in Italy who, along with a tough Afrikaaner sergeant named Coertze, escaped and joined a partisan band. These were not communist partisans but monarchists, a fact which later assumes some importance. At some point very late in 1943 half a dozen of these partisans, including Walker and Coertze, ambushed a convoy of German trucks. The trucks were carrying Italian Government documents, large sums of currency and an assortment of extremely valuable jewellery. And they were carrying one other thing - four tons of gold. This was apparently the treasure of Mussolini but Mussolini was destined never to see his gold again.

There were several things that the six partisans could have done at this point but human nature being what it is it’s not surprising that they decided to keep the treasure for themselves. Their problem, and a very big problem it was, was how to get the gold out. They decided to hide the treasure in an abandoned lead mine and they dynamited the entrance to keep their hoard secure.

This gold brought ill luck to most of the partisans. No less than four of the six men involved met violent deaths (some in slightly mysterious circumstances) before the end of the war.

Fifteen years later neither Walker nor Coertze has been able to come up with any workable scheme for getting the gold out of Italy. But Peter Halloran has such a scheme. It will require money and careful planning and it will require a yacht. Halloran has the right yacht for the job. The tricky part is that he’s going to need Walker and Coertze to behave themselves and co-operate and since Walker is an alcoholic and Coertze is short-tempered and they hate each other this will be quite a challenge.

As you would expect the top-secret plan to extract Mussolini’s gold from Italy doesn’t remain a secret for very long. There are soon other interested parties, and they play rough. And of course there’s a woman. She’s beautiful and somewhat mysterious and as to whether she is untrustworthy, that’s a question that only time will answer.

There are some ambitious action set-pieces although they are a bit confused and chaotic. Bagley doesn’t quite have MacLean’s gift for building tension. He also doesn’t have MacLean’s gift for taut plotting. His plots lack the neat little twists that MacLean was so good at. There’s a clever story here but it drags just a little in places.

There is one other striking similarity to MacLean in this novel. The romance sub-plot doesn’t quite work. Halloran and Francesca fall in love because the plot requires them to but we don’t really get much of an inkling into the reason for their mutual attraction. It just suddenly happens.

While I’ve always had slight reservations about Bagley’s plotting I have to admit that he handles the character interactions (the non-romantic character interactions) extremely well. He brings together a small group of people who don’t know each other very well, don’t necessarily like each other and definitely don’t trust each other. They also have to deal with several outsiders and those outsiders might be friendly, or neutral, or downright hostile. Somehow they have to pull off a complicated plan without double-crossing or being double-crossed.

The best moments take place on the yacht and Bagley does go close to pulling off a MacLean in these scenes, with the sea itself as much of an enemy as the bad guys. The fact that we’re not entirely sure who are the bad guys also helps. The climax (at sea) is well executed and quite exciting.

The Golden Keel is a pretty solid action thriller. Not quite in the top rank but still recommended.