Bibliography

Date first published	03/10/1991
ISBN Number	978-0-14-017458-8
Page Count	474 p/b
h/b= hardback : p/b= paperback

Storyline

Tim Blackburn's wife died in a ball of flame in the Channel, victim of a mystery bomber. His son had died years earlier in Northern Ireland, victim of a terrorist attack. To cap it all his daughter Nicole had vanished in the North Pacific after joining an outlawed organisation called Genesis dedicated to saving the planet, by violence if necessary

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With nothing else to live for, Blackburn goes in search of nicole in his yacht Stormchild. He hopes to rescue her from the clutches of Genesis. But where would a secretive organisation of ruthless environmentalists hide? Even if Blackburn finds his daughter, will she welcome his rescue?

Review

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. it had the right balance of technical detail, but plenty of action and pace to carry the reader along. The story starts off simply enough with Blackburn, his wife and daughter living a pleasant life together, although it has been marred with the death of his son.

Out of the blue a mysterious sailor and environmentalist appears at the harbour and carries off their only daughter. Blackburn does not like the charismatic von Rellsteb, and tries to stop him leaving with Nicole. His wife however suggest that they let their daughter go, and that she will return in a her own time. However 4 years pass, and nothing is heard of their daughter again.

Blackburn and his wife decide to sail to Guernsey for the Easter holiday, and spend the time with family and friends. An unexpected business deal delays Tim from sailing off - a deal that saves his life.

With nothing left of his old life, a desire to find his daughter becomes his focus, and he becomes determined to find her and rescue her, a decision that he might live to regret.

The characters are nicely drawn, you are left wondering whether von Rellsteb is truly bad, or just a charismatic chancer looking for pretty girls. The initial meeting puts him into the unsavoury category, but he does not seem that bad. it is only as the story unfolds, the evil of the Genesis group becomes apparent, and the fact that his daughter is tied up in the heart of things only makes things worse.

As with a lot of Cornell's leads, they find love, and in this case it is a much younger woman, who seems completely at odds with his nature, being a non smoker, non drinker and vegetarian. However they team up and together find out the truth about Genesis.

Unlike Scoundrel - which followed, I liked the lead characters. Blackburn is easy to side with, his love interest is intriguing, and then you have his stout hearted, insensitive brother, who appears to mess the blossoming romance. It is only when they reach the secret base of the Genesis group that the whole thing takes a much nastier turn, and the full horror of what is being perpetrated is revealed. von Rellstreb eventually gets his just deserts, although not from Tim. As for Nicole's fate - I'll leave that for you to discover!

So a really good read, there are not that many twists and turns, the novel in some ways could be described as a horror novel, as the story descends from happy (if marred) life, to ultimate horror and violence. The whole aim of the Genesis group has become perverted through moral corruption, to the point where they are killing sea otters for pelts which they sell!

The story is initially a slow burn - however it gradually builds up the tension and pace so that by the end you really don't want to put the book down. It is certainly one of his best modern sea adventures. Give it a go.

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