The Blue Ice

by Hammond Innes

Publisher:

Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller

, 2016

A ruthless fortune hunter sails to Norway to unlock the mystery of the Blue Ice in this sweeping adventure at the edge of the world.

Bill Gansert thrived during World War II. An industrial genius, he mobilized millions of men and machines for the fight against fascism, but when the war is through, he’s cut adrift. Unmoored in a country that doesn’t need him anymore, Gansert takes to the sea, embarking on an adventure that will take him to the ends of the earth—and show him the desperate treachery that lies within man’s soul.
 
It’s been ten years since adventurer George Farnell disappeared after setting out to make his fortune in the frozen wilds of Norway. Two lines of poetry and a shard of rock are all that remain of him, and only Gansert has the wit to understand Farnell’s final discovery—and the daring to seize it for his own. With a small crew, he sets out for the Arctic Circle to a whaling station in the icy shadows of the mountain known as Blue Ice, where he will make his fortune anew—or be destroyed by his own poisonous ambition.
 
Inspired by author Hammond Innes’s travels among the whalers of Norway, The Blue Ice is a story of hard-driving adventure as only the acclaimed writer of Atlantic Fury, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, and other classics could tell it.
 
 

Praise for The Blue Ice

“Action adventure with maximum of suspense and tension, aided by the background atmosphere of a Norwegian glacier . . . Assured and accomplished adventure.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
Praise for Hammond Innes
“Mr. Innes is a whale of a writer.” —The New York Times
 
“Authentic and excellent . . . His plot, characters and suspense live up to the setting.” —San Francisco Chronicle on Air Bridge
 
“Great Britain’s leading adventure novelist.” —Financial Times
 
“Hammond Innes was exceptional even within an exceptional breed. . . . A romantic adventurer in the style of Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling.” —TheGuardian
 
“Hammond Innes deals magnificently with disaster.” —TheObserver
 

Product Details

• Title : The Blue Ice
• Author: Innes, Hammond
• Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
• Publication Date: 2016
• ISBN: 9781504040112

About Hammond Innes

Hammond Innes (1913–1998) was the British author of over thirty novels, as well as children’s and travel books. Born Ralph Hammond Innes in Horsham, Sussex, he was educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist at the Financial News. The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. Innes served in the Royal Artillery in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of major. A number of his books were published during the war, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1940), and Attack Alarm (1941), which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain.

Following his demobilization in 1946, Innes worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for their fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of place, such as Air Bridge (1951), which is set at RAF stations during the Berlin Airlift. Innes’s protagonists were often not heroes in the typical sense, but ordinary men suddenly thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. Often, this involved being placed in a hostile environment—for example, the Arctic, the open sea, deserts—or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. Innes’s protagonists are forced to rely on their own wits rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers. An experienced yachtsman, his great love and understanding of the sea was reflected in many of his novels.

Innes went on to produce books on a regular schedule of six months for travel and research followed by six months of writing. He continued to write until just before his death, his final novel being Delta Connection (1996). At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations to enable others to experience sailing in the element he loved.