Innes, Hammond "Maddon's Rock"

Gripping thriller which opens in Mar. 1945 aboard a rusty tramp freighter (the TRIKKALA) embarking on a treacherous westbound Murmansk Run convoy run. The vessel’s disreputable captain – an ex-China Seas skipper of shady background – hatches a plot to steal the TRIKKALA’s secret cargo (a fortune in silver bullion being transferred to England by the Soviet Union) and with the connivance of a handful of confederates, makes it appear that the ship has struck a mine and sunk. Most of the TRIKKALA’s remaining crew as well as a handful of British Army ratings and a young English woman are consigned to sabotaged lifeboats – and nearly all perish. But not Innes’ hero (nor the young woman) who together later discover that the ship had not sunk but rather had been deliberately stranded on a far northern Arctic Sea islet, Maddon’s Rock. They make the perilous voyage back across northern seas to Maddon’s Rock, locate the TRIKKALA and attempt to make the vessel seaworthy enough to steam to England. Being a thriller, just about the time that their get the TRIKKALA ready for her voyage, the villainous ex-captain arrives at Maddon’s Rock – and Innes’ plot starts taking on the aspects of a “Perils of Pauline” gone to sea. Apart from being a rip-roaring sea tale, the serial today is of note for its depiction of wartime Murmansk and a late wartime homebound Murmansk Run convoy. In 1948 the serial was published as a novel in England under the title Maddon’s Rock and in the United States under the title Gale Warning (see following entries)::

Gale Warning. New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, 1948. 272 p.

Maddon’s Rock. London, Eng.: Collins, 1948. 256 p.