Hammond Innes's Maddon’s Rock

Maddon’s Rock is a 1947 Hammond Innes thriller and it’s a textbook example of his approach to the writing of thrillers.

Hammond Innes (1913-1988) had a writing career that lasted almost sixty years (his first novel came out in 1937, his final novel appeared in 1996). In the postwar era and right up until the end of the 1970s Innes was one of the most popular of all thriller writes. After his death he pretty much vanished into obscurity. He was a very fine writer but his type of writing was no longer fashionable.

Innes wrote books with heroes. Heroes became progressively less fashionable. Writers and publishers preferred anti-heroes, or heroes who were so deeply flawed as to almost anti-heroes.

Innes was one of the writers who established a template for thrillers that was used with enormous success by celebrated thriller writers like Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley and Gavin Lyall - thrillers that were not pure spy thrillers but incorporated elements of crime, adventure and espionage.

Innes also followed in the Eric Ambler tradition of having heroes who were not necessarily professional spies or policemen. They were more likely to be ordinary guys who found themselves caught up in situations of danger, intrigue, espionage and crime. The reluctant hero tradition.

In 1947 when Maddon’s Rock was published Innes was really hitting his stride, having had major successes with novels such as Killer Mine, The Lonely Skier and The Blue Ice. He was already established as a reliable writer of bestsellers.

Alistair MacLean took the basic Hammond Innes formula but increased the pacing and added more action. MacLean was also a bit more daring when it came to narrative structure, experimenting with both fist-person and third-person narration and with unreliable narrators. MacLean was the greater writer but Innes provided the foundation on which he built.

Hammond Innes pioneered the thriller in which the landscape itself becomes a character. The landscape is as deadly an enemy as the bad guys. This was something that Alistair MacLean would bring to a point of perfection (especially in his masterpieces Night Without End and Ice Station Zebra). Both authors had a particular fondness for two types of setting - freezing wastes of snow and ice, and the sea. MacLean was clearly influenced by Innes but I think the truth is that both men had a genuine natural affinity for such landscapes, which is why they were able to use such settings so very effectively.

Maddon’s Rock is the story of the SS Trikkala which sank in March 1945 when it hit a mine. A year later a distress message is picked up - from the SS Trikkala.

In March 1945, with the war clearly almost over, a British Army corporal named Vardy and two other British soldiers are in Murmansk (where they had been assisting the Red Army in the war against Hitler) waiting to be repatriated to England. They board a nondescript freighter called the Trikkala. They are assigned to guard a special cargo. The crates are labelled as containing obsolete inoperative aero engines. Why would clapped-out obsolete aero engines need such security? The answer of course is that those crates do not contain aero engines. They contain bullion.

Vardy is a very ordinary guy. His fiancée has been pressuring him to get a commission but really Vardy has had enough of the Army. He just wants to go home, marry Betty and resume an ordinary life. He was an enthusiastic sailor with a deep and abiding love for the sea but was unable to get into the Navy. He’s not the stuff of which heroes are made. He’s no fool and he’s no coward, he’s just an average man doing his best.

There are things happening on the Trikkala which arouse Vardy’s suspicions. He overhears some odd conversations. He hears some extraordinary stories about the Trikkala’s captain, stories involving murder and piracy in the South China Sea before the war. Maybe they’re just tall tales that sailors tell each other in waterfront bars. There’s the fact that those crates do not contain aero engines.

Vardy is worried, but he doesn’t realise just how much he should be worried. He is headed for a nightmare.

There are three parts to the story, with the first and third parts taking place at sea.

How he responds, and how his relationship with Jenny Sorrell (the Trikkala’s only civilian passenger) develops are things that you’ll have to read the book to find out. What Innes does is to to take a relatively straightforward crime plot and add some very devious and very original twists. It becomes a story of suspicion, betrayal, love, revenge and survival with an extraordinary and unexpected action finale at Maddon’s Rock. It’s one of the great maritime adventure tales.

Innes also gives us an exceptionally memorable villain, a failed actor turned sea captain who quotes Shakespeare incessantly. When he’s quoting Hamlet you don’t have to worry but if he starts quoting Macbeth it’s time to be very afraid. Vardy is a fine hero, an unremarkable man who is forced to do remarkable things. There’s also a fine feisty heroine and some wonderfully colourful and eccentric minor characters. And there’s the rock itself, and the sea.

A great adventure story. Highly recommended.

The Blue Ice by Hammond Innes

Hammond Innes (1913-1998) was one of the big guns in the British thriller scene in the postwar years. His first novel appeared as early as 1937 and by 1948 when The Blue Ice was published he was already a very well established writer.

Innes differed slightly from other popular British thriller writers of his era (writers like Ian Fleming, Alistair MacLean, Gavin Lyall and Desmond Bagley) in that his books were adventure fiction rather than dealing with espionage or organised crime or similar subjects. 

The hero of The Blue Ice is also not in any sense a professional. He is not a secret agent or an undercover cop. He is a mining engineer. The heroes of the earlier generation of British thriller authors who flourished during the 1920s and 1930s were also usually not professionals but they were enthusiastic amateurs who actively sought out adventure. Innes’s hero is not of this type. After retiring young (he’s thirty-six) following a meteoric business career all Bill Gansert wants to do is to sail his yacht to the Mediterranean, soak up some sunshine, lie on some beaches and sample the local wines. He has no desire whatsoever for adventure.

Gansert’s plans change when his old boss asks him to go to Norway instead of the Mediterranean. Another minerals expert, George Farnell, has just been found dead there. Gansert knew Farnell quite well and he’d like to find out what happened - the story doesn’t quite add up. Before his death Farnell had sent a mineral sample (of a very valuable mineral indeed) to Britain, hidden inside a chunk of whale meat. 

Gansert is certainly intrigued by the puzzling circumstances of Farnell’s death but the main reason he agrees to go to Norway is the thought that Farnell really had made a very major and very valuable find. It’s not that Gansert is motivated by money - he’s simply obsessed with minerals and loves the challenge of developing a new mine. He’s like a butterfly collector on the trail of an exceptionally rare specimen - he just can’t help himself.

Gansert will have some uneasy company on the trip. Firstly there’s Jill, who knew Farnell very well (although just how well Gansert isn’t sure). Secondly there’s a shady Norwegian businessman who happens to represent a competitor, or possibly a future partner, to Gansert’s old company. And thirdly there’s the crippled Dahler, a Norwegian exiled from his country for collaborating with the Nazis.

The most interesting character in the tale is Farnell. Even though he’s dead when the book begins his shadowy presence in the background dominates the story. Farnell had been obsessed by mineralogy to an extreme degree, he had been convicted of fraud and during the war had worked (in slightly mysterious circumstances) with the Norwegian Resistance. The war is yet another shadow looming over the story. It seems like everyone involved claims to have fought for the Resistance but all have also been suspected of collaborating with the Nazis. There’s an atmosphere of suspicion, deception and betrayal and when you add the lure of greed the combination is obviously going to be explosive.

Innes made something of a specialty of maritime adventure tales and a large part of this novel takes pace at sea, or by the sea, or even under the sea. Later the action moves to the snow-covered wastes of a glacier with an epic ski chase. The British thriller writers of the postwar period seemed to be strangely drawn by settings involving ice and snow. Alistair MacLean was of course famous for his superb use of such settings in novels like Night Without End but Desmond Bagley (in Running Blind) and Gavin Lyall (in The Most Dangerous Game) also used such settings with considerable skill. Innes certainly makes the most out of the Norwegian locales. 

Innes was noted for spending a great deal of time researching his novels and the effort obviously pays off in this case. Modern readers might not be too thrilled by the detailed descriptions of a whaling station but it does add atmosphere.

This is not what one would call an action-packed story. There’s not much action at all until quite late in the story. Mostly Innes relies on slowly building up the tension, and he does this very successfully. When the action does pick up it does so quite effectively.

The Blue Ice is more a psychological thriller than an action thriller but the author carries it off with both flair and subtlety. Highly recommended.

Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles

Malice Aforethought, published in 1931, is generally regarded as Francis Iles’ masterpiece, and with good reason.

Iles was in fact a pen name used by Anthony Berkeley Cox(1893-1971) who also wrote detective fiction under the name Anthony Berkeley.

Malice Aforethought is not a conventional mystery novel, since the identity of the murderer is disclosed on the very first page. This was a technique that had been used earlier by R. Austin Freeman, who described it as the inverted detective story. In Freeman’s hands the technique was used to place the emphasis on the way the detective solves the crime. Iles uses it for slightly different purposes - his concern is with the psychology of the murderer.

Dr Bickleigh is a popular and well-respected country general practitioner in the tiny English village of Wyvern’s Cross, but he is not happy. He is dominated by his wife, and the fact that she is his social superior makes this even more intolerable (the novel dates from 1931 when the class divide in Britain was still an immense and unbridgeable gulf). He compensates for his sense of inferiority by seducing as many of the women of Wyvern’s Cross as he can.

An unfortunate liaison with yet another woman from a higher social class brings Dr Bickleigh’s discontent to head and he decides that life with his wife Julia has become unendurable. Murdering her seems to be the best possible option. 

Iles gives us a disturbing glimpse into the mind of a man who is so outrageously self-centred that he no longer has any sense of morality at all. He lacks any kind of adult understanding of the world. 

It’s a novel that fully lives up to its reputation as one of the classics of crime fiction. Highly recommended.

The other well-known Francis Iles crime novel, Before the Fact, is interesting although not as good as Malice Aforethought. On the other hand the 1929 Anthony Berkeley mystery The Poisoned Chocolates Case is absolutely superb.

Francis Iles’ Before the Fact

Francis Iles’ 1932 novel Before the Fact is best known today as the book on which Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie 1941 Suspicion was based. As most fans of the movie are aware, the endings of the novel and the movie differ very significantly, and which you prefer is largely a matter of taste.

Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893-1971) was born in England and wrote detective stories under several names, including Anthony Berkeley, A. Monmouth Platts and Francis Iles.

Before the Fact, like another of his Francis Iles novels, Malice Aforethought, can be considered to be one of those crime novels that try to be more than just a straight detective novel. As literary critics would rather pompously put the matter, they are an attempt to transcend the limitations of the genre. In both cases there is no doubt whatever of the murderer’s identity (in both cases his identity is revealed on the very first page) - both are psychological studies of murderers (and in the case of Before the Fact of potential murder victims).

Before the Fact is told from the point of view of Lina Aysgarth (née McLaidlaw). Lina has always considered herself to be strong-willed and as a woman who will have to rely on brains rather than beauty if she is to find a husband. And at the age of twenty-eight Lina has decided that she very much wants to find a husband.

The man she chooses is Johnnie Aysgarth. This does not please her father, General McLaidlaw. He is convinced that Johnnie is simply after her money (she already has five hundred a year and will come into £50,000 on her father’s death, a very large sum of money at the time). The general believes that Johnnie, like all the Aysgarths, is no good. But Lina has made her choice.

She soon realises that Johnnie is not a terribly good catch. He spent a great deal of money on her on her honeymoon but then she discovers that it was all borrowed money. Johnnie does not have a penny to his name. Lina tells him that he will have to get a job, a suggestion that shocks him deeply. Work is something he has never contemplated. Lina insists, and Johnnie relents to the extent of taking a position as an estate manager. But there are more unpleasant discoveries to follow. Johnnie is a hopeless (and notably unsuccessful) gambler. He has huge debts. And he is as irresponsible as a child. Oddly enough, this is what makes Lina love him so much. She is convinced that he could not live without her.

Johnnie’s gambling continues to be a problem, and then a fortunate accident happens (fortunate indeed for Johnnie) - the general dies and Lina is now a wealthy woman.

As their marriage progresses Johnnie’s irresponsibility becomes if anything even worse. He takes to forgery. And then Lina makes an unnerving discovery. Her father’s death may not have been due to natural causes, Or rather, the natural causes (a heart condition) may have been given a helping hand by Johnnie. Whether Johnnie is actually, in strictly legal terms, a murderer is open to doubt.

Worse is to follow. There will be other deaths, and other revelations about Johnnie. Lina’s suspicions will continue to grow and drive her almost to breaking point.

The second half of the book differs substantially from the film and the ending differs even more dramatically. Interestingly enough Hitchcock originally intended to go with the ending of the book. I don’t propose even to hint at either ending, but they do represent a considerable change in the tone of the story. I personally prefer the ending of the film but the ending of the book certainly has its virtues.

Both book and film are concerned mostly with the effect of Lina’s suspicions on her own peace of mind, and indeed her sanity. Both are also fascinating case studies of a charming, even loveable, man who really is, as Lina’s father warned her, no good.

The book, even more than the film, is also concerned in an almost gothic manner with the heritability of evil. All the Aysgarths are charming, and none of them is any good. Are Johnnie’s weaknesses of his own making, or are they simply the inevitable results of heredity?

Compared to the movie the book is perhaps a trifle over-long, with a lengthy sub-plot which Hitchcock quite wisely dropped from the movie. Nonetheless the novel is an intriguing early example of the psychological crime novel, and in 1932 (at the height of the so-called golden age of the detective story as intellectual puzzle) was certainly ahead of its time. It can also be seen as a very bizarre love story. The psychological crime novel is not a favourite sub-genre of mine but this is a very good example of the breed and can certainly be recommended.