McCutchan, Philip Convoy of Fear

A continuation of McCutchan’s 1989 Convoy East, Convoy of Fear finds Commodore Kemp’s convoy sailing on from Malta to Alexandria, thence through the Suez Canal and finally to Trincomalee in Ceylon. A complement of Navy Wrens aboard his own vessel (a converted liner serving as a troopship) continues to add anxieties to the already high wartime tension. Cholera hits the convoy in the Suez Canal, and here McCutchan is most impressive in his writing. Unfortunately, McCutchan also seems to be competing with Clive Cussler to see how many action-packed episodes he can squeeze into the plot. In addition to the aforementioned cholera outbreak, he includes multiple enemy attacks on the convoy by Italian submarines, a lone wolf Japanese submarine and a German pocket battleship, collisions at sea, threat of a German surface raider and a typhoon which comes out of nowhere to sink convoy vessels. Whew!