The Mary Deare (1956)

Based on a modernization of the Marie Celeste case with substantial changes

I first read this book 30 years ago, when I was a kid; I've reread it a few times since and have loved it every time. Innes had a long career and I've enjoyed many of his other books, but none were quite this good.

Everything clicks -- from the opening chapter, when an apparently unmanned freighter, the Mary Deare, nearly runs down a sailboat; to the courtroom drama where the captain is tried for the loss of the Mary Deare; to the return to the wrecked ship, stranded and breaking up on a reef, where the mystery is solved. The story is exciting and very believable. If the action doesn't keep you turning the pages, the mystery will.

If you like classic adventure stories, read this book. ( )

British thriller writer Matt Lynn has chosen to discuss The Wreck of the Mary Deare , on FiveBooks (http://five-books.com) as one of the top five on his subject - The Great British Thriller, saying that:

“…He takes the ordinary and makes it frightening. We think of the Channel as a placid, dull bit of sea, but towards Brittany it’s very rough and sailors think of it as a particularly nasty sea. So, this man is on a little boat out there and he spots an abandoned ship. There has been a terrible storm and only the captain is left and he’s gone completely mad.

The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/matt-lynn ( )

I wasn't sure what to expect here, but I loved the book. A derelict and seemingly abandoned ship nearly runs down a sailing yacht in the Channel Sea. Investigation leads the protagonist to find a half-crazed man on board who swears he's the captain, and that the crew mutinied. The story involves the inquiry, where we uncover lots of motives, and lots of suspicious characters. The story is a bit long on technical jargon (ie. sailing and seagoing terms), but I usually picked up meanings from the context, and was able to sail along with the fast-paced narrative to a totally satisfying conclusion. ( )

3081 The Wreck of the Mary Deare, by Hammond Innes (read 31 May 1998) This is an awesome work, fist published in 1956. It tells of a ship which its owner is trying to sink, and of Gideon Patch, its captain. There are fearsome scenes off the French coast - south of the island of Jersey. There is a lot of sea and sailing talk, and so I can't tell how plausible the fear-gripping events are, but it has a beautiful ending. I liked the book very, very much. When Innes died on June 10, 1998, at age 84 in Kersey, England, his obituary in the New York Times described him as the author of this book "and more than 30 other novels". ( )