The Hammond Innes Collection Volume Three: Isvik, Air Bridge, Atlantic Fury, and Levkas Man

Four action-packed thrillers from the author of The Wreck of the Mary Deareand "Great Britain's leading adventure novelist" (Financial Times). British novelist Hammond Innes was perhaps best known for his nautical mystery, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, which was made into a film starring Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston. But the prolific writer, World War II veteran, and dedicated yachtsman wrote over thirty novels of adventure and suspense during his long career. The collected fiction here spans the globe--from Antarctica to the Hebrides, Cold War Germany to sun-soaked Greece. As always, "for sheer excitement Hammond Innes will be hard to beat" (Daphne du Maurier). Isvik: Isvik is a legend--a ghost ship that sits on the lip of Antarctica, two hundred years old at least, swallowed by the ice with severed masts and helmsman frozen to the wheel. Or so a glaciologist reported before his plane crashed on the ice shelf. Now, wealthy Scotsman Iain Ward is determined to find the frozen frigate--and he's bringing along Peter Kettil, a wood preservation specialist and seasoned sailor himself. But Ward and Kettil are not the only ones willing to go to any lengths to discover the ship's secrets . . . "[A] dramatic adventure that will keep readers guessing until its startling climax." --Publishers Weekly Air Bridge: After his heroic service in World War II, pilot and aircraft engineer Neil Fraser must steal planes in order to make a living, flying them from England to the land that will soon become Israel. But when he's caught by a ruthless tycoon, he's forced to build the wealthy man a new aircraft engine. With dreams of conquering the sky, Bill Saeton wants Fraser to fly the plane over a divided Germany as part of the Berlin Airlift. But as Saeton's ambition becomes a dangerous obsession, Fraser begins to look for a way to bail out. "Authentic and excellent . . . His plot, characters and suspense live up to the setting." --San Francisco Chronicle Atlantic Fury: When a British army unit is ordered to evacuate from the remote, rocky island of Laerg in the Hebrides during a violent storm, it's up to a pair of reunited brothers to save the group of soldiers--and each other. "Nothing short of superb." --The New York Times Levkas Man: When his parents died, Paul was sent to Amsterdam to live with his mother's old lover, the eccentric archaeologist Pieter Van der Voort, who was obsessed with the origins of man. After eight years at sea, Paul discovers Van der Voort is in Greece on an archaeological expedition that's spiraling out of control. To reach Greece, Paul takes a job working for a smuggler, embarking on a journey that will carry him across the globe--and into the blackest depths of man's most primal instinct. "Quick-action adventure--a particularly interesting background." --The Daily Telegraph

About the Author :
Hammond Innes (1913-1998) was the British author of over thirty novels, as well as children's and travel books. Born Ralph Hammond Innes in Horsham, Sussex, he was educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist at the Financial News. The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. Innes served in the Royal Artillery in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of major. A number of his books were published during the war, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1940), and Attack Alarm (1941), which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain. Following his demobilization in 1946, Innes worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for their fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of place, such as Air Bridge (1951), which is set at RAF stations during the Berlin Airlift. Innes's protagonists were often not heroes in the typical sense, but ordinary men suddenly thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. Often, this involved being placed in a hostile environment--for example, the Arctic, the open sea, deserts--or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. Innes's protagonists are forced to rely on their own wits rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers. An experienced yachtsman, his great love and understanding of the sea was reflected in many of his novels. Innes went on to produce books on a regular schedule of six months for travel and research followed by six months of writing. He continued to write until just before his death, his final novel being Delta Connection (1996). At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations to enable others to experience sailing in the element he loved.