Showing results by author "James Pattinson" in All Categories

The gunners on the Golden Ray were a strangely assorted bunch. There was the professional, Sergeant Willis, in love with his job, Vernon the intellectual, and Miller the tragic communistic misfit who found his Russian Mecca not quite what he expected.

It was Mrs Croyden who had been taken by the idea of digging up the history of the family. It seemed to be the kind of thing that everyone was doing nowadays. And once started she became more and more enchanted by the project. Even her husband, George, having seen the ancient photograph of a most attractive girl, long since dead, was taken by the project. The snag was that even Great Aunt Maud, the owner of the photograph, had no idea what had happened to the beautiful girl named Isabella. Apparently she had completely vanished and to the rest of the family had simply become “The Unknown”. Would the mystery ever be solved?

English adventurer Harvey Landon is alone in New York - wanted by the police and with only a few dollars in his pocket. Then Theodore Cranefield offers him a job that he can't afford to refuse. Soon he is driving south with a gunman named Gregg to a rendezvous in Florida with the so-called El Aguila, Ramon Arturo Alvarez, and the tough young Pete. The drama swiftly moves across the hurricane-swept Gulf of Mexico to a country shortly to be ravaged by a volcanic eruption, an earthquake and a revolution....

When a convoy of 45 ships tries to make it from Halifax to England, it finds progress sabotaged by an onslaught of enemy submarine torpedoes. Terror strikes the crews who are forced to witness their comrades drowning or becoming human torches amid the burning oil spilling from the ships. Engine failure forces the SS Regal Gesture to drop out of the convoy and make her way across the hostile waters alone and undefended.

World War Two is over and the Cold War beginning when Brett Manning is sent to do some business in Archangel. But on his way, in the thick fog and darkness of the Barents Sea, disaster strikes and his ship is run down by a much larger vessel. Only Brett and one other man are picked up. The two survivors find themselves on board a Russian freighter bound for a secret destination. Slowly it dawns on Brett and his companion that they now know too much for their own good.

Sam Grant is tasked with the job of tracing the vendor of a painting that had come up for sale at a London auction room. Produced by a German Jewish artist who had perished in a Nazi concentration camp, the painting had been stolen from a schloss in Lower Saxony in World War Two. Then it had apparently vanished. Now it has surfaced 50 years later. So who had possessed it in those years? Grant has to find the answer for Gerda Hoffman, an attractive blonde. But the case turns out to be more dangerous and life-threatening than he could have anticipated…

Hector Langdon volunteered for service in the army in World War I when he was no more than 17 years old, though he gave his age as 20. It was the kind of reckless action he was to take all his life, much to the regret of his solicitor father who wished him to follow in the same profession. So he drifted from one occupation to another after the war, never really settling down. It seemed he had to be forever on the move. Until he met Eva Gray, and even that meeting was to lead in the end to tragedy.

There were five dead men in the cabin of the boat, lying under six fathoms of Caribbean water. But the men had not been drowned: they had been shot through the head at close range. John Fletcher had gone down to photograph a sunken ship, but he took photographs of the boat and its cargo of dead men instead. Soon he is having trouble with the island police, a private army of thugs and two CIA agents. Now Fletcher wishes he had followed his first impulse and said nothing to anyone....

When a lifeboat marked 'Valparaiso I' is discovered, a strange mystery unfolds. The Valparaiso had been sunk by a Japanese submarine nearly a year earlier whilst carrying a million pounds of gold bullion. In the lifeboat is a man with a question mark tattooed on his left forearm; but he can shed no light on the situation because his memory has gone - or so he claims. Two other survivors from the Valparaiso, Rains and Jones, have doubts about the man's professed amnesia.

Paul Crane had not altogether liked the look of Skene and West when they turned up at his North Norfolk cottage and made him an offer he could not refuse, but his chequered past had long since taught him not to be particular...Only when he fell in love with Penelope was there any hope of going straight. And perhaps he would have stuck to his promise if the chance of making a million had not, as it were, dropped into his lap.

The search for Arnie Walker was not a job that Sam Grant was particularly keen to undertake. But Miss Gloriana Goldstar was so pressing in her demand that he should do so that it became impossible to refuse. A trip to Amsterdam seemed a pleasant enough prospect but when there are people there intent on bringing your life to an abrupt end, the experience becomes rather less than enjoyable. All he was doing was trying to find Mr Walker and urge him to return to Miss Goldstar's loving arms.

It was an oddly assorted company of passengers that boarded the S.S. Chetwynd in Hong Kong and Singapore to take passage to Freemantle. In this company, living in such close quarters, there was inevitably a certain amount of friction. But human passions would prove insignificant by comparison when the indescribable fury of the storm that hit.

When a valuable cargo ship is abandoned in the mid-Atlantic, Captain Barling of the SS Hopeful Enterprise has his own special reasons for wishing to tow it into port. But is he justified in risking men's lives for the sake of his own desires? Shipmate Adam Loder thinks it is nothing but a wild goose chase and chief engineer Jonah Madden is worried about his ailing engines; but Charlie Wilson is hiding a deeper concern.

English adventurer Harvey Landon agrees to help his old Oxford friend, Don Vargas, who is plotting the overthrow of a South American government. The Revolutionaries, however, are without aircraft and, to obtain their supply, Landon volunteers to take a letter out of the country to a mysterious Mr. Delgado in New York. Complications begin as Landon is stalked on board the New York-bound oil tanker by two agents intent on killing him and stealing the letter.

When Peter Hadley, second mate of the British tramp steamer Ocean Waif, goes ashore in Philadelphia looking for the sister from whom he has heard nothing for two years, he quickly finds himself caught up in a web of mystery and deceit. It does not take him long to realise that his own life is in danger. But Hadley is a tough customer and knows how to look after himself. His inquiries bring him into contact with a number of colourful, bizarre and dangerous characters who both help and hinder him in his search.

When Sergeant Fred Mason of the Maritime Royal Artillery eventually locates his new ship SS Radgate, he finds the little coaster quite a contrast to his previous posting. Despite the difficulties of working during the London bombing raids, the crew must get themselves ready for the invasion of France. Through the confusion, agony and bloodshed of D-Day, against the ever-present threat of mines, bombs and shells, the story switches from London to the Normandy beaches and Mulberry harbour as the crew weathers storms and tragedies.

Alan Caley was far from delighted to receive a phone call from his old school pal Chuck Brogan, inviting him to lunch. It was some time since he had last seen Brogan and he remembered that the man had taken part in a gold robbery and been sent to prison for a number of years. Caley was reluctant to accept, Brogan was persuasive and hinted that the meeting might turn out to be to Caley's advantage - financially.

Drake read the obituary for Howard Gray in the Daily Telegraph. It had intrigued him because he had been very close to Gray many years ago, though they had lost touch later for reasons that were certainly not mentioned in the newspaper. A lot that had happened in those early years, things that whoever had supplied the material for the obituary obviously didn't want to see in print. As Drake recalls his adventures with Gray, he wonders who supplied the material.

Sometimes, in his own mind, Keele referred to himself as “The Booking Clerk”. This was a rather macabre private joke since the tickets he issued were all one-way. Yet whatever he was called, his was a profitable occupation. The time came, however, when he wished to leave it. Miss Rona Wickham had entered his life, and the role he played hitherto was incompatible with his association with her. Unfortunately, he found that getting out was not as easy as he had hoped.

One of the most important attributes of a prospective candidate for the U.S. presidency is that of being clean; not to have any dirt in your background, present or past. Senator William S. Gaullicauder appeared to fit the bill perfectly in this respect. But then a skeleton came rattling out of an English cupboard, threatening the senator’s squeaky clean reputation. The story had to be suppressed, and fast. But competing interests were involved, and violence and murder would ensue.