The Blue Ice

A race to find valuable mineral ore leads a group of men far into the icy and treacherous mountains of Norway

One of the century's great yarn-spinners...marvellously evocative...another manifestation of the Innes genius

Hammond Innes… surely the doyen of the well-made modern thriller

Mr Innes' work stands in a class by itself

Hammond Innes deals magnificently with disaster

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.

It all begins with a lump of rock. To Bill Gansert, it seems a message from beyond the grave; the legacy of his one-time colleague George Farnell who disappeared in a storm of mystery and suspicion ten years ago. The rock, an enticing hint at a rich, hidden supply of mineral ore, leads Gansert and team of men to Norway and to a glacial labyrinth of mountains, following in Farnell's footsteps to the source of the ore. But others have heard of the rock, and the wealth it promises, and are also hot on the trail...

Maddon's Rock

From the master of suspense and adventure, a tale of vanished silver bullion, a false-hearted sea captain and his brave crew.

The doyen of the well-made modern thriller

Readers who quicken to the expert tempo of John Buchan's adventure stories will congratulate themselves on finding in Innes such an admirable inheritor of the high tradition

The story of the Trikkala is a strange one. 
Reported sunk in 1945, she sails into port one year later, barely afloat, her crew and valuable cargo missing. What happened during that year at sea? What secrets of betrayal and murderous greed were played out on the desolate islet of Maddon's Rock?

Air Bridge

A sensational tale of crime and courage in the shadow of the Berlin airlift

Swift and urgent, rising to a tremendous climax

Mr Innes’s work stands in a class by itself

Hammond Innes novels have brought countless hours of reading enjoyment to millions

The Soviets have cut off food and fuel supplies to West Berlin in a final attempt to force a stranglehold over the city. The Allied response is the Berlin airlift: thousands of planes carrying supplies - a lifeline to the people of the city. 
A chance for heroism perhaps, but not for Neil Fraser or Bill Saeton. One is an ex-RAF pilot on the run from the law, the other will stop at nothing to build the perfect aircraft engine. In an abandoned hangar in the British countryside, tensions rise to boiling point.

The Strode Venturer

A fast-moving, suspenseful tale that combines boardroom intrigues with seafaring adventures, from the author of The Wreck of the Mary Deare

Excellent...his expertise with volcanoes, avalanches, cave-ins and fire at sea is beyond question

Here is one of the sheerly enjoyable reading experiences of the year

Seamanship, storms, tension galore, money talk and a decent minimum of love - what more could one ask?

Yes! A rip-roarer...those action sequences at which he is so brilliant, the equatorial heat, the bubbling sea-bed, an outworn ship and a drunken skipper - splendid!

What could link the slick world of London boardrooms, an isolated island race in the Maldives and the mysterious voyages of a battered ship skippered by a brooding alcoholic? It falls to Geoffrey Bailey to unlock the mystery, but first he must overcome both family tragedy and the unpredictable treacheries of land, sea and big business.

Dead and Alive

From a quiet beach in Cornwall to Italy's vice-laden underworld, this is the compelling tale of one man's search for a new beginning

As crisply exciting as Eric Ambler and as convincingly realistic as C.S. Forester

They say people can’t write stories anymore. Tell that to Hammond Innes

Mr. Innes's readers were addicts when it came to his books, which were cinematic in sweep and sold 40 million copies

When David Cunningham returns to the Cornish coast to mourn a wartime love affair, he little imagines the mysterious quest that awaits him: it will lead him to the Mediterranean, to danger and a life of adventure, to the dark world of racketeering in Naples, the bleak hills beyond Tivoli, and a woman with a tragic past.

North Star

A story of love and inner turmoil played out against the churning Shetland seas

A master story-teller, at his best when the sea is one of the chief characters

Fast pace, terrific atmosphere, tension...Nobody can do this sort of thing better than Mr Innes

Hammond Innes must be one of the best tellers ever of the straightforward adventure in a harsh, well-researched setting

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.

Michael Randall flees to the wild seas around the Shetlands to escape an impossible dilemma. There he finds a North Sea oil rig and the unlikely possibility of a new life. But one stormy night this glimmer of hope for the future, and Randall's life itself, is thrown into jeopardy.

Hammond Innes

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

A superbly constructed and atmospheric thriller

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

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY STELLA RIMINGTON 
 
It lies somewhere beneath the snow, high in the Dolomites: Nazi gold, tainted with the blood of murdered men. Only a few know its secrets, and one by one they come in search of it – a hot-tempered Italian Comtessa, a racketeering pimp, a Greek criminal, a film-maker and a hapless writer. A tense battle of wits leads to an explosive finale in Innes’ classic tale of revenge and deadly greed.

Hammond Innes

Praise for The Lonely Skier

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

First rate

A superbly constructed and atmospheric thriller

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

First rate

A superbly constructed and atmospheric thriller

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

First rate

A superbly constructed and atmospheric thriller

Books by Hammond Innes

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter