Quintessential Hammond Innes:
Adventure in the Bahrain area with forays into the desert and amongst the Bedu. The hero is a staid British lawyer, trying to manage an impossible assignment related to a youth in search of his father, an Englishman gone native.

The Middle Eastern culture was portrayed fairly well with some atmospheric passages of Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter, Saudia). The situation around oil explorations of the '60's era set an exciting suspense.
Although this is not a tale of espionage, the older style story will appeal if you like vintage tales by Nevil Shute, Eric Ambler and Desmond Bagley. ( )

Idealistic young man heads to the Middle East to find the father he's never met, the man who never acknowledged him or his sister. There's enough description of oil companies and local culture to give this story a feel of authenticity and keep the reader interested. ( )

British oil exploration and tribal rivalries in 1950s Arabia make for a rousing adventure. ( )

A unique adventure tale that takes place in the Trucial States, the area that today consists of the UAE and parts of Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Iran. This was part of the British Raj, frontier states for British India. And after Indian independence, they continued on as British protectorates until 1971 or so. Thus this Innes novel, published in 1960, is perhaps one of the last contemporary stories about the Raj. The sweep is enormous, taking the protagonist, lawyer George Grant, from Britain, to the Persian Gulf, where is faced with the task of tracking down David Whitaker. Whitaker is a young man Grant earlier provided the means to search for his legendary father, a former British colonel who converted to Islam and lived as an Arab, all the while searching to strike oil in a remote part of the desert. Tribal conflicts, heroic last stands, and martyrdom ensue. And all these efforts are generated by the desperate desire to save an ancient oasis from the encroaching sands of desert. The oasis becomes a symbol of ancient ways, lost dreams, even as David Whitaker wants to save it and provide hope for a future that retains traditional ways of life.

Because I have just finished reading through Erich Ambler's spy thrillers, it is easy to see Ambler's influence on Innes, especially now that I have finished my fourth Innes novel. Like Ambler, Innes' heroes are ordinary men put in extraordinary circumstances. But with a twist. Usually, an Innes character seems to be faced with monumental forces of nature, as well as with the antagonistic forces of political intrigue. Innes' heroes also lack the wit and irony of Ambler's. But they still have a depth that sometimes outshines Ambler. For it seems' that Innes decided to write heroic figures that had a bit of a moral failing somewhere at work within them, whether it be anger, fear, greed, or indifference. This makes them sometimes more interesting and often ends up leaving the reader with ambiguous feelings about the resolution of the novels.

As for The Doomed Oasis itself, it seems to lack the intimacy of the other Innes novels I have read. The grand sweep of the story comes at a price. George Grant and David Whitaker seem to orbit each other, as they do David's sister, Sue. Nobody really connects. And of course this especially applies to David and his father, Charles Whitaker. In the end, the characters remain as isolated as the desert wilderness they explore. And not even the "happy ending" can disturb that final sense as being a commentary on the desperation of finding meaning in existence. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this - reminded me a bit of Shute's Trustee from the Toolroom - in a good way !

Explores the impact of oil & water resources on communities, of military, business, political and journalistic expectations and manages to be a good story at the same time ! ( )