Owen, John Across the Western: A Novel

An interesting novel dating to the early days of World War 2 that combines “thriller” action with musings about business ethics. The work is set in fictitious “Weftport,” a port definitely modeled after Liverpool. Owen’s hero is Gwyn Ravelston, managing owner of a British shipping line, a man who loves ships for their aesthetic beauty, and a man who appreciates the sacrifices that the officers and crew aboard his vessels must make in wartime. Throughout much of the novel Ravelston is engaged in a very convincing battle of wills with the Ravelston Line’s general manager, the latter a longtime company employee embittered over the fact that he had been passed over when it had come time to name a new firm head (Ravelston had gotten the nod due to family connections). Owen’s depiction of office politics is convincing, and the reader has no doubt that idealistic Ravelston will not prove victor in the ensuing strife.

The thriller angle to the story involves a German espionage ring operating in Weftport, with its chief actually a member of the Ravelston Line’s board of directors. The last half of the novel takes place in 1939 and early 1940, and, as Weftport ships are increasingly torpedoed by German U-boats, the book’s narrator (a solicitor friend of Ravelston’s) begins to suspect espionage. How the narrator discovers and breaks the spy ring brings the novel to an exciting close. Sadly, Ravelston, sailing aboard one of his ships in order to impress upon his shipping personnel that he is willing to share their wartime dangers, is no longer on the scene as he himself becomes one of the last victims of the espionage ring when his ship is torpedoed and sunk.