The Man from the Sea: A Classic British Mystery

Michael Innes does it again in this book. His writing is crisp. The plot is well paced. The characters are well drawn. Good choice for a relaxing but literate read.

Michael Innes wrote some of his best, most easily flowing suspense novels starring young men, usually college undergraduates, and "The Man from the Sea" (1955) is no exception. His young men are uniformly intelligent (one might even say intellectually arrogant), intrepid, and high-spirited. They tend to actively seek adventure rather than waiting for adventure to stumble over them.Dick Cranston was playing hide-and-seek on a midnight beach with his lover, Lady Blair, when a naked man walked out of the sea. Shortly thereafter, someone starts shooting at him. Cranston makes a split second decision to help the man escape from his would-be-murderers. He doesn't know that his decision will involve him in a long, at times terrifying journey from the coast of Scotland to London. He soon learns that the man from the sea is a British nuclear physicist who had defected to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War, and who now has his own reasons for returning home.This Cold War melodrama has a bit of anti-communist rhetoric, although not nearly as much Evil Empire stuff as other mystery novelists who were writing at the same time, e.g. Rex Stout. Innes is more interested in the complex character of the man from the sea, who betrayed his country for what might seem like trivial reasons to us, and who might be planning to betray her again. We don't find out until the end of the book why the man from the sea returned to England.Meanwhile there's a rousing chase across the quarries, beaches, and heath of Scotland wherein Dick Cranston falls out of love twice and into love for a third and probably last time.Love, suspense, and the searing breath of danger envelope us as we follow Cranston and the man from the sea to their final, surprising destination.