(Click
on the book to buy The
Golden Keel from
Amazon.co.uk)
The Golden Keel,
Although
this book was written just 17 years after the end of World
War 2 it is just as readable today, with its historical
allusions to Mussolini's missing gold, as it must have been
in the early sixties. The search for lost gold is an
evergreen subject for an adventure story.
When I first started reading this novel I thought it was
going to be a little autobiographical. Peter Halloran, the
story's hero, sets off for South Africa at the end of the
war just as the author had done. The character's wife was
called Jean, the author's is called Joan... However life
and story soon part company. Maybe, as experts in the field
often point out, if you're going to write something then
write about a subject you are familiar with. For a first
novel this would be especially true.
This first is written in the first-person, a difficult but
rewarding technique because of it's intimacy. The
ingredients include a loner-hero, all too human with human
failings but an underlying decency that sees him through; a
mixed bag of characters that are known to him because of
the ship-building business he ran before the adventure; a
gang of suitably bad and brutal baddies for us all to hiss
and boo at; and of course the trade-mark technical detail
and ingenuity that brings the story to life.
Also in this novel is a rare thing - a character (the
mercenary Metcalf) who isn't exactly on the side of the
angels and yet is lucky enough to make it into a second
story six years later (The Spoilers).
The title is the give-away as to how the good-guys intend
to make away with the loot once they've found and retrieved
it. But can they outrun their chasers, or will the gold of
Mussolini sink without trace beneath the waves?