The Lonely Skier - Softcover

Hammond Innes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006159664 ISBN 13: 9780006159667

Publisher: Fontana Press, 1987

Synopsis

Neil Blair grabbed the opportunity with both hands: three months in the Italian Dolomites, with all expenses paid and the chance to write the film script that would establish his reputation. Instead he plunges headlong into tragedy, as he stumbles on the location of a secret hoard of Nazi gold - stolen in the last desperate days of the war. High up on the Col de Varda, the icy glaciers provide ideal cover for ruthless criminals determined to claim their prize and the perfect setting for murder disguised as an accident.

About this title

About the Author

Ralph Hammond Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, on 15 July 1913 and educated at Cranbrook School, Kent. He left school aged eighteen, and worked successively in publishing, teaching and journalism. In 1936, in need of money in order to marry, he wrote a supernatural thriller, The Doppleganger, which was published in 1937 as part of a two-year, four book deal. In 1939 Innes moved to a different publisher, and began to write compulsively, continuing to publish throughout his service in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. Innes travelled widely to research his novels and always wrote from personal experience - his 1940s novels The Blue Ice and The White South were informed by time spent working on a whaling ship in the Antarctic, while The Lonely Skier came out of a post-war skiing course in the Dolomites. He was a keen and accomplished sailor, which passion inspired his 1956 bestseller The Wreck of the Mary Deare. The equally successful 1959 film adaptation of this novel enabled Innes to buy a large yacht, the Mary Deare, in which he sailed around the world for the next fifteen years, accompanied by his wife and fellow author Dorothy Lang. Innes wrote over thirty novels, as well as several works of non-fiction and travel journalism. His thrilling stories of spies, counterfeiters, black markets and shipwreck earned him both literary acclaim and an international following, and in 1978 he was awarded a CBE. Hammond Innes died at his home in Suffolk on 10th June 1998.

Review

"From the first page we are gripped by that sense of tension, mystery and urgency that Hammond Innes so well commands...Gains excitement with every chapter...the climax could not be more tense" -- Elizabeth Bowen "First rate" Daily Telegraph "A superbly constructed and atmospheric thriller" Independent "Hammond Innes was a compulsive storyteller... he had an inborn ability to relate a fast-moving narrative with a knack that drove the story on and kept the reader in rapt attention" Scotsman "They say people can't write stories anymore. Tell that to Hammond Innes" Sunday Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Fontana Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0006159664
• ISBN 13: 9780006159667
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208