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felinity's review against another edition
4.0
When John Sands, captain of the Seawitch and part-owner of a salvage company, sees the wreck of a large freighter that almost ran them down, he takes the opportunity to investigate: a ship abandoned with engines going full ahead and no radio plea for help is far from usual. He gets far more than he bargained for. What happened to the Mary Deare? And what's the truth of the matter? The first officer's story is unbelievable, but the alternative is horrific.
In this enthralling maritime adventure, Innes captures your imagination with his incredibly vivid descriptions, and the ruthless desperation of the men involved. It's obvious Innes was an experienced sailor, and had a great love for the sea. His passion is reflected in every page, and does more for the characters than his technical skill.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
In this enthralling maritime adventure, Innes captures your imagination with his incredibly vivid descriptions, and the ruthless desperation of the men involved. It's obvious Innes was an experienced sailor, and had a great love for the sea. His passion is reflected in every page, and does more for the characters than his technical skill.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
cmbohn's review
2.0
I had a hard time following this one. I think you really need to be a sailor to appreciate what's going on. It seemed to just go on and on. I don't know if I will give this author another try or not.
sheeprustler's review
3.0
Entertaining thriller that has the statutory happy ending. The villains get their come uppance. The hero survives and gets a successful business out if it. The anti hero turns out to be another hero, and gets the girl.
smcleish's review
3.0
Originally published on my blog here in October 2000.
An early Hammond Innes - maybe even his first - thriller, The Wreck of the Mary Deare is evocative of the seafaring life which is central to so many of his novels. It begins in the small boat Sea Witch, crossing the Channel to be refitted as a salvage vessel. Suddenly, out of the dark, stormy sea, they are almost run down by a far larger, apparently abandoned, ship, the Mary Deare. Meeting up with it again later (surely an unlikely coincidence), the co-owner of the Sea Witch and narrator of the novel boards her, and finds only one man aboard, its captain, who insists that they run the ship aground on rocks to the south of the Channel Islands. The reason for this becomes clear in the second part of the novel, at an enquiry into the ship's fate in which it begins to look as though the Mary Deare was intended to sink supposedly carrying a valuable cargo that had been transferred elsewhere, for the purposes of a fraudulent insurance claim by the ship's owners.
This middle section is distinctly unconvincing, the court simply swallowing the flimsy statements of the shipping company's lawyers. The final section amounts to a race to return to the ship, to either reveal or destroy the evidence of the fraud, and this too is rather unlikely - would it really be permitted for the interested parties in the case to reboard the ship with no other witnesses?
Occasionally chillingly atmospheric - the Marie Celeste-like first appearance of the Mary Deare is the best scene in the novel by far - The Wreck of the Mary Deare is generally slackly put together. The plot is stretched to far to allow Innes to fit in more action scenes; these may be exciting, but are not good enough to excuse or hide the novel's problems.
In 2010, I added the following comment: Re-working this review for the blog, I checked on Fantastic Fiction. Far from being Innes' first thriller, it is his twentieth, published twenty years after the first, Air Disaster.
An early Hammond Innes - maybe even his first - thriller, The Wreck of the Mary Deare is evocative of the seafaring life which is central to so many of his novels. It begins in the small boat Sea Witch, crossing the Channel to be refitted as a salvage vessel. Suddenly, out of the dark, stormy sea, they are almost run down by a far larger, apparently abandoned, ship, the Mary Deare. Meeting up with it again later (surely an unlikely coincidence), the co-owner of the Sea Witch and narrator of the novel boards her, and finds only one man aboard, its captain, who insists that they run the ship aground on rocks to the south of the Channel Islands. The reason for this becomes clear in the second part of the novel, at an enquiry into the ship's fate in which it begins to look as though the Mary Deare was intended to sink supposedly carrying a valuable cargo that had been transferred elsewhere, for the purposes of a fraudulent insurance claim by the ship's owners.
This middle section is distinctly unconvincing, the court simply swallowing the flimsy statements of the shipping company's lawyers. The final section amounts to a race to return to the ship, to either reveal or destroy the evidence of the fraud, and this too is rather unlikely - would it really be permitted for the interested parties in the case to reboard the ship with no other witnesses?
Occasionally chillingly atmospheric - the Marie Celeste-like first appearance of the Mary Deare is the best scene in the novel by far - The Wreck of the Mary Deare is generally slackly put together. The plot is stretched to far to allow Innes to fit in more action scenes; these may be exciting, but are not good enough to excuse or hide the novel's problems.
In 2010, I added the following comment: Re-working this review for the blog, I checked on Fantastic Fiction. Far from being Innes' first thriller, it is his twentieth, published twenty years after the first, Air Disaster.
alhambra's review
adventurous
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
froggye9dcc's review
4.0
Thrilling! But I couldn't understand a word of the ship details. About all I know is fore and aft, starboard and port. I had trouble envisioning what the big ship looked like and the areas of it that they travelled to.
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