REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:
BILL KNOX – Seafire. Webb Carrick #6. Lengthy, UK, hardcover, 1970. Doubleday Crime Membership, US, hardcover, 1971.
…Carrick’s uniform and the Fishery Safety badges on the station wagon would have registered. When the ferry reached the north shore there can be a telephone name to the subsequent fishing harbour and from there to a different and the subsequent. Fishery Safety males had been the equal of sea-going police in Scottish coastal waters. And whether or not it was the slim destroyer like strains of a fishery safety cruiser off-shore or the sighting of a solitary particular person on land, the fishing villages, even essentially the most law-abiding, saved their intelligence community primed.
Webb Carrick is often the primary officer on the cruiser Marlin below “stubby bearded Captain James Shannon,” however Carrick has briefly been assigned to responsibility as Commander of the analysis vessel Clavella which he’s to fulfill within the fishing village of Quinnbeg.
The Clavella is on a reasonably customary mission finding out plankton to to insure the waters off Scotland’s coast keep wholesome and productive, however Carrick isn’t any sooner ashore in Quinnbegg when he meets a hostile and suspicious populace satisfied the analysis vessel is liable for latest disastrous catches and the scientists aboard are doing greater than finding out plankton.
They aren’t far off both. One thing is occurring that Carrick hasn’t been made aware about, and earlier than he lays this drawback to relaxation, the fishing business will likely be threatened, the British economic system will face wreck, numerous lives will likely be endangered, and nuclear brinkmanship, Russian sleeper brokers, and homicide will all increase their ugly head.
These unfamiliar with this sequence is perhaps shocked to find Invoice Knox managed to get some eighteen titles out of the fish police and Webb Carrick, and most of them quick paced clever thrillers mixing thriller, seafaring, the lore of the Scottish coast and its wealthy historical past and mysterious geography, together with strong detection, suspense, and journey. You would possibly anticipate tales of smuggling, unlawful fishing, and industrial air pollution from such a sequence, however Knox throws in spies, and even a little bit of SF (*) and quaint terror of the Deeps into the combination, all as neat as a very good Scotch.
Invoice Knox is greatest recognized for his lengthy working Scottish procedural sequence about cops Thane and Moss, however that’s solely a small a part of his prodigious output. Along with Thane and Moss and Carrick and the Fishery Protecting service Knox additionally wrote the Talos Twine thrillers a couple of powerful UN agent as Robert McLeod, the Jonathan Gaunt “Remembrancer’ sequence, a number of books about Andrew Laird marine insurance coverage investigator, and a handful of stand alone books and non-fiction. A journalist from Glasgow Knox realized earned his crime writing expertise as against the law reporter, and it exhibits in a transparent concise and properly researched model that mixes with a vivid creativeness.
His explicit present was mastering the best mixture of mysterious occasions, compounding suspense, likable characters, journey, and an enviable present for the relentless rousing climax.
Seafire (a kind of plankton inflicting all the issue right here) produces a sometimes masterful Knox outing wherein little is what it appears and Carrick has his fingers full bringing the dangerous guys to bear and fixing a menace that reaches far past the small fishing villages the place it started.
Should you aren’t aware of the Webb Carrick sequence, I extremely suggest them. I’ve learn not less than half of them and by no means been disillusioned. Witchrock, Devilweed, Blacklight, and Stormtide are explicit favorites within the lengthy working sequence.
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(*) From Conan Doyle on, British thriller writers have by no means shied from a contact of Science Fiction to paint their plots, from William LeQueux and E. Phillips Oppenheim and mysterious digital eyes that sink battleships. to Edgar Wallace and King Kong, Margery Allingham and Mr. Campion, to John Creasey’s Dr. Palfrey and Ian Fleming and his imitators, SF has typically injected itself into the style, and in recent times turn out to be extra frequent with the American breed.
