Funny thing at work, here, it appears. For The Killer Mine seems to have taken much of the material from Hammond Innes' earlier 1940 wartime espionage novel, Wreckers Must Breathe, and reworked it into postwar crime adventure. Substitute a clandestine smuggling base for a secret Nazi submarine pen and being lost in the maze of an abandoned Cornish tin mine for the wandering in a bricked off part of London's ancient sewers turned into a labyrinth and you have the core mystery and device for suspense in place.

But something else occurs, here, too. Hammond Innes has grown tremendously as a writer since penning Wreckers Must Breathe. His flawed protagonist is center stage. And the exploits as well as fears and repressed desires make army deserter Jim Pryce all the more interesting. He is a perfect example of the postwar liminal character, caught between and betwixt. And things don't resolve themselves in this novel, either. At book's end, we're still unsure of his fate. Ambiguity runs rampant. It makes for a far better read than Innes' earlier prewar and early war novels. ( )

Killer Mine - Hammond Innes ****

I love Hammond Innes, he is an author that seems to have been forgotten a bit over the past decade or so which is a real shame. Anyone who enjoys a good action story coupled with adventure should give them a try. Innes typically has fairly ordinary men that find themselves cast into circumstances beyond their control, often in a wilderness situation. Killer mine is no different, but this time it isn’t set in the bleakness of Alaska or a snow bound mountain, but along the rugged coastline of Cornwall.

We follow Jim Pryce, a native of Cornwall who has deserted from the army and making his way back home via a very unscrupulous cargo ship. Beaten and left for dead he manages to survive and makes his way to a contact for help. Unfortunately for Jim it seems that all thieves are interlinked and he is soon roped into a plot that will endanger his life whilst uncovering some dark secrets from his family past. The majority of the book centres around an old disused mine and the family that have been the owners for decades. Some see the mine as a way of broadening their illegal activities, but this would mean abandoning it from the original use of tin and potentially scuppering any future plans.

I was actually holidaying in Cornwall when I started reading this novel, and really enjoyed looking out at the landscape and seeing how well Innes managed to capture the scenery. I admire the way that he doesn’t need to have a James Bond like character at the helm of the novel, and therefore we know that if the circumstances were right we could all find ourselves in a similar predicament. The only problem I had with Killer Mine was that it relied rather too heavily on coincidence, almost to the point of making the plot a little too unbelievable. All in all a really good read and has to be up there with some of Innes greatest pieces. ( )