The Bedford Incident

biThis is a novel of the sea, /b/i

and it is told with a skill that merits comparison with the best. It

consists of three parts:

biThe War/b/i is

the cold war of the 1960’s, but on a little-publicized and bleakly isolated

front where opposing naval forces secretly maneuver against each other in the

eternally empty reaches of the Arctic Ocean. Here they contest for strategic

stakes as vital as those of Berlin or Viet Nam.

biThe Chase/b/i is

by a modern American destroyer on the track of a Soviet submarine whose mission

is to probe NATO defenses based on Greenland. The code-name of this brilliantly

elusive submarine is Moby Dick. As the stalking action moves through the lonely

vastness of a frozen desolation, some of the fatal obsession which cursed

Captain Ahab and his i Pequod/i seems

mystically to afflict Captain Erik Finlander, USN, and his USS i

Bedford/i.

biThe Battle/b/i is

finally joined above the algaed hulk of a melancholy victim of one of the last

traditional battleship engagements in the North Atlantic. While all the

computer-controlled miracle weapons of modern anti-submarine warfare play their

part, it is the far more terrifying obstinacy — and weakness — of inflamed

human spirit which determines the ultimate outcome of this searing tale.

Mark Rascovich was born in San Francisco, California. He lived

in Europe from the time he was two years old until he was twenty-one. He

attended schools in Germany, England, Sweden and Paris, and was graduated from

the Sorbonne. His World War II service included three years as a reconnaissance

pilot in the Alaskan and African theaters and concluded with transport duty on

the North Atlantic. After the war, he was engaged in ocean towing, salvage

work, marine research and writing. Mr. Rascovich traveled throughout Europe and

the Americas, the Near East and Africa. He held pilot licenses for land and sea

aircraft and for watercraft.