“I
enjoyed writing the thrillers, but suspect I am happier writing historical
novels. I’m always delighted when people want more of the sailing books, but
I’m not planning on writing any more, at least not now – but who knows? perhaps
when I retire.”
I recently reread Mr Cornwell’s 1989 novel Killer’s Wake—published as Sea Lord in the United Kingdom—and I
enjoyed it as much the second time as the first. John Rossendale, the 28th Earl of
Stowey, is a vagabond sailor who is called home for his mother’s impending
death. He left England four years
earlier on his sailing yacht Sunflower,
and vowed never to return. He left under
a cloud—he was accused of stealing a Van Gogh painting from his family trust,
and while no one could prove his guilt, everyone is certain of it.
Upon his arrival in England his boat is immediately broken
in to, he is approached by a millionaire tycoon who wants to purchase the Van
Gogh with no questions asked, he is assaulted by a pair of hired toughs, and
his twin sister accuses him outright, and very nastily, of stealing the Van Gogh. Rossendale doesn’t want to be in England, and
by appearances England doesn’t want Rossendale.
Killer’s
Wake is written in first person, and while a few of the
plot twists are seemingly juvenile (Rossendale determines to give the painting,
estimated to be worth 20 million pounds, to an unpleasant millionaire to
impress the millionaire’s step daughter) it is an immensely entertaining
novel. The prose smoothly shows the
story through Rossendale’s easy going perspective, who is a likable, if
stubborn and at times even maddening (think about giving away 20 million pounds
when you can’t purchase your own dinner), protagonist. The sailing descriptions are vibrant and even
beguiling, and are really what separate this novel from many of its
contemporary, and current thrillers—
“It
was nighttime and the wind was rising.
It was England’s homecoming wind, a southwesterly, but there was nothing
welcoming about in this malevolent cold force.
At dusk the wind had been force three or four, by midnight it was five
and rising, by three in the morning it I’d taken in the first reef, and now, an
hour before dawn, Sunflower was riding a hard force seven.” The mystery is competently executed, but it is the pure adventure of the story, which makes it as entertaining and enjoyable as it is. If you enjoy the older style suspense novels. The sort where the hero doesn’t save the world, but rather only saves his world. The sort Desmond Bagley, Alistair MacLean, Gavin Lyall, and even an early Jack Higgins, wrote you will really enjoy Killer’s Wake. It is a throwback, even for something written and published in the late 1980s, and it is a damn good throwback.
I read this one when it first came out in paperback. Enjoyed it.
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