A Plague of Sailors

Inbunden bok. William Collins Sons & Co Ltd. 1971. 254 sidor.

Nära nyskick. SKOTTLAND. This takes place shortly after an earthquake has brought the Middle East together. But another crisis, designed to tear it apart, is on its way in a ship loaded with contaminated grain containing an especially virulent form of anthrax.

The British, and in particular one Brevet Cable, are trying to stop it since it's their plague, stolen from the coast of Scotland.

It is just before dawn in a remote Highland glen. At the main gate of what seems to be a hydro-electric station lounges the bored watchman, counting the minutes before he comes off duty. The headlights of a distant car are the only touch of life in a tranquil scene. And then...

And then we are pitchforked into one of the most sensational adventure stories of the last decade, in which germ warfare is harnessed to the needs of a gang of ruthless fanatics.

A merchant vessel ploughing across the Mediterranean with a cargo of grain for earthquake-racked Israel; ambush and murder on the high seas; the transformation of eight thousand tons of grain into eight thousand tons of golden murder; a dramatic ramming which leaves the reader almost as breathless as the protagonists; the final explosive denouncement with its bitter ironical twist: in A "Plague of Sailors" the stakes are the lives of a whole nation and the risks are proportionally high...

After his astonishingly successful debut with "A Flock of Ships" everyone wondered whether Brian Callison could do it again. He has not; he has done far, far more.