September 1961
Heroes of thrillers have to be tough in order to survive being on the right side for more than fifty pages. John Talbot, the narrator of this fierce, tough and breathless story is pretty well indestructible. After a brief prologue, which sets the scene - Florida and the Gulf of Mexico - he is in a hot country courtroom, as the prisoner. He shoots himself out of this, taking as hostage a young, blonde girl named Mary Ruthven, who turns out to be the daughter of a millionaire. After some nerve-wracking hours on the road - police blocks, all radios calling out for him (he has shot a policeman) - he and Mary get picked up in a motel, and taken to her home; a simple colonial mansion studded with anti-burglar devices, which seem needless, as it was already packed to the roof with relentless ruthless and, to put it simply, nasty men. General Ruthven seems to have locked all doors on a stableful of thugs.
The General owns an oil rig called X13, twelve miles out in the Gulf, and it is there, and many fathoms below it that most of the story is fought out. The last scene is in a bathyscaphe (it is fascinating how more and more fashionable life is being conducted under water - viz. the last James Bond), and finally, the good end happily and the bad unhappily, which according to Miss Prism, is what fiction means. In this case, the bad come to various, violent, and definitive ends, and the good have that touch of romantic tragedy about them which is concerned with abstract satisfactions like revenge and justice. I enjoyed this book very much: I like suspense, and action, and wondering what will happen but not caring too much about it all. Mr. Maclean seems to me to be growing as a writer in this medium: he is acquiring greater economy and precision, and also walking that tightrope of not quite cheating the reader about fore- and after- knowledge of events.