Campbell's Kingdom

Hammond Innes

2016. g. okt. · Open Road Media

Par šo e-grāmatu

A daring young man heads to the oil fields of Canada for a last crack at making his fortune in this tale from “Great Britain’s leading adventure novelist” (Financial Times).

Adrift since the end of World War II, Bruce Weatherall has wasted years of his life pretending he’s an ordinary man. But beneath his mild-mannered exterior lurks the soul of an adventurer who would sacrifice everything to make his fortune. So when the chance of a lifetime comes along, Weatherall doesn’t even bother quitting his day job. He simply disappears.
 
When he learns he’s his grandfather’s sole heir—though he hardly knew him—Weatherall’s life is forever changed. The supposedly mad old man died in Canada, frozen to death in a shack on the edge of a mountain, where he lived his final years in a feverish hunt for oil. Everyone thought he was crazy, but his grandson believes he may have been on to something. So the intrepid young man travels to the far reaches of Alberta to take the oil industry by the throat—and live or die in pursuit of his grandfather’s impossible dream.
 
A rollicking adventure in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London, Campbell’s Kingdom is thrilling, “guaranteed entertainment” (Kirkus Reviews).

 

Par autoru

Hammond Innes (1913–1998) was the British author of over thirty novels, as well as children’s and travel books. Born Ralph Hammond Innes in Horsham, Sussex, he was educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist at the Financial News. The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. Innes served in the Royal Artillery in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of major. A number of his books were published during the war, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1940), and Attack Alarm (1941), which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain.

Following his demobilization in 1946, Innes worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for their fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of place, such as Air Bridge (1951), which is set at RAF stations during the Berlin Airlift. Innes’s protagonists were often not heroes in the typical sense, but ordinary men suddenly thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. Often, this involved being placed in a hostile environment—for example, the Arctic, the open sea, deserts—or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. Innes’s protagonists are forced to rely on their own wits rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers. An experienced yachtsman, his great love and understanding of the sea was reflected in many of his novels.

Innes went on to produce books on a regular schedule of six months for travel and research followed by six months of writing. He continued to write until just before his death, his final novel being Delta Connection (1996). At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations to enable others to experience sailing in the element he loved.