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Dead and Alive
David Cunningham turned the wreck of an old landing craft into a vessel which would make any skipper proud. Then came the letter that turned his trading plans upside-down. "Find out what has happened to Monique, please, " and the faded image with it seemed to leave him no alternative. The letter took him to the Camorra, to pay the bloody ransom for a life.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
11 people are currently reading
54 people want to read
About the author
Hammond Innes
104 books107 followersRalph Hammond Innes was an English novelist who wrote over 30 novels, as well as children's and travel books.He was awarded a C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire) in 1978. The World Mystery Convention honoured Innes with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bouchercon XXIV awards in Omaha, Nebraska, Oct, 1993.
Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, and educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist, initially with the Financial Times (at the time called the Financial News). The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. In WWII he served in the Royal Artillery, eventually rising to the rank of Major. During the war, a number of his books were published, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1941) and Attack Alarm (1941); the last of which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain at RAF Kenley. After being discharged in 1946, he worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes.
His novels are notable for a fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of places, such as in Air Bridge (1951), set partially at RAF Gatow, RAF Membury after its closure and RAF Wunstorf during the Berlin Airlift.
Innes went on to produce books in a regular sequence, with six months of travel and research followed by six months of writing. Many of his works featured events at sea. His output decreased in the 1960s, but was still substantial. He became interested in ecological themes. He continued writing until just before his death. His last novel was Delta Connection (1996).
Unusually for the thriller genre, Innes' 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 (the Arctic, the open sea, deserts), or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. The protagonist generally is forced to rely on his own wits and making best use of limited resources, rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers.
Four of his early novels were made into films: Snowbound (1948)from The Lonely Skier (1947), Hell Below Zero (1954) from The White South (1949), Campbell's Kingdom (1957), and The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). His 1973 novel Golden Soak was adapted into a six-part television series in 1979.
Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, and educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist, initially with the Financial Times (at the time called the Financial News). The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. In WWII he served in the Royal Artillery, eventually rising to the rank of Major. During the war, a number of his books were published, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1941) and Attack Alarm (1941); the last of which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain at RAF Kenley. After being discharged in 1946, he worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes.
His novels are notable for a fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of places, such as in Air Bridge (1951), set partially at RAF Gatow, RAF Membury after its closure and RAF Wunstorf during the Berlin Airlift.
Innes went on to produce books in a regular sequence, with six months of travel and research followed by six months of writing. Many of his works featured events at sea. His output decreased in the 1960s, but was still substantial. He became interested in ecological themes. He continued writing until just before his death. His last novel was Delta Connection (1996).
Unusually for the thriller genre, Innes' 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 (the Arctic, the open sea, deserts), or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. The protagonist generally is forced to rely on his own wits and making best use of limited resources, rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers.
Four of his early novels were made into films: Snowbound (1948)from The Lonely Skier (1947), Hell Below Zero (1954) from The White South (1949), Campbell's Kingdom (1957), and The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). His 1973 novel Golden Soak was adapted into a six-part television series in 1979.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 20, 2020
With a title doubtless designed to recall those wanted posters from the wild west of America, Innes' novel is about an equally lawless region, Italy in the immediate aftermath of the second world war. And yet it opens, not in the dry, fly-ridden south of the peninsula but on the cold, wet North Cornish coast.
Intriguingly, the star opening the show is a wreck. Specifically a landing craft, an LCT Mark 4, stranded on Boscastle beach not far from King Arthur's Castle at Tintagel. And it will lead to a quest in which narrator David Cunningham will play the chivalrous knight seeking a damsel in distress.
But not before he, his business partner and his crew of two have black marketeers, gun runners, resurgent fascists, gangsters, a forger and a rapist to cope with, and a ruined infrastructure to negotiate.
Dead and Alive is an old-fashioned adventure novel, a mix of traditional virtues and of stark realism that typified stiff upper lip thrillers of a certain period: the hero would like to be morally unambiguous but has to make compromises, turning a blind eye to some activities that he finds repugnant but is powerless to affect. There is an insular righteous streak to Cunningham's narrative when he describes an Italy that the Allies sought to liberate but which is still ruled by sharks and shysters.
Innes was in a good position to reflect the postwar picture on the peninsula: he rose to the rank of Major with the Royal Artillery during the war in Italy; after being demobbed he remained for a while in the country and was able to witness conditions first hand before completing the novel in 1946 in Rome. This was to reflect his later habit of researching for half the year before writing up during the following six months.
He was also a lifelong sailor (the novel is dedicated to his wife Dorothy with whom he was to sail around the world) and this informs the first part of the book in which the landing craft is refloated, outfitted and taken down to the Mediterranean. My father, just a few years younger than Innes, was a marine engineer and I could recognise the same practical enthusiasm for nautical matters that the two shared. I recognised too the culture of hard drinking and smoking that was prevalent then and for many years afterwards, and which now seems very alien.
Very much of its times, Dead and Alive also reflects a sexism which was all-pervasive then. Yet along with his own leftish leanings Innes displays an instinct for sexual equality in his treatment of Monique Dupont, a victim of abuse but one who's able to brave danger and elicit Cunningham's admiration and, ultimately, love.
Finally, I want to draw attention to the author's literary skills. Whether he is describing Cornish cliffs or Neapolitan tenements, moonlit nights at sea or scrubby sun-baked Italian earth he manages to make the scene vivid without any sense of artifice. The skill of rendering a text effortless to read is one I admire as it's one I find difficult to manage myself! Even the slightly convoluted opening sentence made me want to read on:
Intriguingly, the star opening the show is a wreck. Specifically a landing craft, an LCT Mark 4, stranded on Boscastle beach not far from King Arthur's Castle at Tintagel. And it will lead to a quest in which narrator David Cunningham will play the chivalrous knight seeking a damsel in distress.
But not before he, his business partner and his crew of two have black marketeers, gun runners, resurgent fascists, gangsters, a forger and a rapist to cope with, and a ruined infrastructure to negotiate.
Dead and Alive is an old-fashioned adventure novel, a mix of traditional virtues and of stark realism that typified stiff upper lip thrillers of a certain period: the hero would like to be morally unambiguous but has to make compromises, turning a blind eye to some activities that he finds repugnant but is powerless to affect. There is an insular righteous streak to Cunningham's narrative when he describes an Italy that the Allies sought to liberate but which is still ruled by sharks and shysters.
Innes was in a good position to reflect the postwar picture on the peninsula: he rose to the rank of Major with the Royal Artillery during the war in Italy; after being demobbed he remained for a while in the country and was able to witness conditions first hand before completing the novel in 1946 in Rome. This was to reflect his later habit of researching for half the year before writing up during the following six months.
He was also a lifelong sailor (the novel is dedicated to his wife Dorothy with whom he was to sail around the world) and this informs the first part of the book in which the landing craft is refloated, outfitted and taken down to the Mediterranean. My father, just a few years younger than Innes, was a marine engineer and I could recognise the same practical enthusiasm for nautical matters that the two shared. I recognised too the culture of hard drinking and smoking that was prevalent then and for many years afterwards, and which now seems very alien.
Very much of its times, Dead and Alive also reflects a sexism which was all-pervasive then. Yet along with his own leftish leanings Innes displays an instinct for sexual equality in his treatment of Monique Dupont, a victim of abuse but one who's able to brave danger and elicit Cunningham's admiration and, ultimately, love.
Finally, I want to draw attention to the author's literary skills. Whether he is describing Cornish cliffs or Neapolitan tenements, moonlit nights at sea or scrubby sun-baked Italian earth he manages to make the scene vivid without any sense of artifice. The skill of rendering a text effortless to read is one I admire as it's one I find difficult to manage myself! Even the slightly convoluted opening sentence made me want to read on:
As soon as she opened the door I was certain I should not have come.
December 28, 2019
Between 1946 and 1950, Hammond Innes wrote seven books. Of these postwar adventure thrillers, five had as their setting either Cornwall or Italy. In the case of the first of those novels, Dead and Alive, the locations for the story are both Cornwall and Italy. This plot creates something of a template for Innes in the immediate postwar years. He doesn't decisively break with it until writing Air Bridge in 1951.
But, here, with Dead and Alive, the author displays a postwar maturity that gave every indication of a writer who could grow with his material. And that is what he would do, shifting to ever more exotic locales in the Mediterranean, Africa, the Pacific, Canada, North Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia.
A couple of things emerge as well: Innes' fondness for employing World War II surplus landing craft in his stories, his dislike of despotism and petty tyranny--to the point that even his somewhat indifferent protagonists are willing to lift themselves into action and become better persons for it--and the exquisite pacing he employs in nearly all his works. There is hardly room to catch your breath before David Cunningham, this story's hero, is dragged into a steadily cascading series of dangerous situations.
With Innes, it's not so much the resolution of the story that matters. (He tends to end things with a quick nod to bringing about a conclusion.) It's the course of the story itself that matters. He would manage to keep up this unsurpassed ability to constantly advance his storylines for the next fifty some odd years until his death.
But, here, with Dead and Alive, the author displays a postwar maturity that gave every indication of a writer who could grow with his material. And that is what he would do, shifting to ever more exotic locales in the Mediterranean, Africa, the Pacific, Canada, North Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia.
A couple of things emerge as well: Innes' fondness for employing World War II surplus landing craft in his stories, his dislike of despotism and petty tyranny--to the point that even his somewhat indifferent protagonists are willing to lift themselves into action and become better persons for it--and the exquisite pacing he employs in nearly all his works. There is hardly room to catch your breath before David Cunningham, this story's hero, is dragged into a steadily cascading series of dangerous situations.
With Innes, it's not so much the resolution of the story that matters. (He tends to end things with a quick nod to bringing about a conclusion.) It's the course of the story itself that matters. He would manage to keep up this unsurpassed ability to constantly advance his storylines for the next fifty some odd years until his death.
January 11, 2024
It’s 1946 and the war has left plenty of people feeling cynical and damaged by their experiences. David Cunningham is one such man; a recently demobbed tank landing craft (LC-T) skipper who decides to revisit a north Cornwall farmhouse where he’d enjoyed a brief idyllic pre-war holiday with his erstwhile girlfriend. He realises this is a mistake but is distracted and enthused by the finding of a wrecked LC-T near Boscastle which an equally frustrated Scot is attempting to refloat. Bolstered by whisky and a grandiose plan to form a company and trade goods across the Mediterranean they set to work.
Before leaving Britain in a blaze of publicity Cunningham receives a letter from a woman who has read of their intention to sail to Naples, beseeching him to trace her estranged daughter who went there at the war’s onset.
All was going swimmingly until, probably unwisely, a Mafia-like boss gets chinned when he offers to buy the ship for twice its value. Fortunately they don’t have a racehorse.
The bitterness of servicemen following their wartime experiences and the grinding poverty of war-shattered Italy are vividly and unsparingly described. Hammond, who had personal experience to draw upon, supplies a tautly written lean account (it has fewer than 160 pages - a lesser writer could easily have padded it out to 300+) and he leaves us in no doubt that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and that no appealing to someone’s better nature is possible when this commodity has been erased by grim reality.
Before leaving Britain in a blaze of publicity Cunningham receives a letter from a woman who has read of their intention to sail to Naples, beseeching him to trace her estranged daughter who went there at the war’s onset.
All was going swimmingly until, probably unwisely, a Mafia-like boss gets chinned when he offers to buy the ship for twice its value. Fortunately they don’t have a racehorse.
The bitterness of servicemen following their wartime experiences and the grinding poverty of war-shattered Italy are vividly and unsparingly described. Hammond, who had personal experience to draw upon, supplies a tautly written lean account (it has fewer than 160 pages - a lesser writer could easily have padded it out to 300+) and he leaves us in no doubt that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and that no appealing to someone’s better nature is possible when this commodity has been erased by grim reality.
April 27, 2025
"Perhaps I sensed the hand of Fate that had brought me back to Trevedra and down to this stranded hulk on the rocks of Bossiney Cove. I like to think so. But I don’t know. Certainly, I did not know then as I walked down that rocky cliff path that my feet were leading me half across the world, back to the Mediterranean, to strange happenings, to danger and a life of adventure."
You know you're reading a Hammond Innes when you encounter a line like that. The hallmark of Innes to prepare you for another gripping page turner...
You know you're reading a Hammond Innes when you encounter a line like that. The hallmark of Innes to prepare you for another gripping page turner...
May 31, 2025
First published in 1946, one year after the end of World War II, "Dead and Alive" by British author Hammond Innes is not the victory lap that one might expect. It focuses on the human cost of that war. British servicemen returning to a home they no longer feel that they belong to. Families separated. Loved ones dead.
David Cunningham and Stuart McCrae are both veterans of the British Navy. Cunningham is at loose ends, having just been demobilized. McCrae is living on a derelict British landing craft, shipwrecked in a cove off of Cornwall. The two become partners and manage to refloat the LCT. They decide to go into business together, using the craft to ship cargo to the Mediterranean. Before setting off on their first voyage, they agree to try and find a young woman, Monique Dupont, at her Mother's request. Monique was last known to be living in Naples.
"Dead and Alive" paints a grim and gloomy picture of post-war Italy. Corruption is rampant. Most Italians are trying to scrape out a living in a bombed-out country. The Black Marketers and gun-runners seem to be the only people who've profited from the war.
Cunningham and McCrae hardly feel like conquering heroes when they return to Italy. If anything, what they witness there just adds to their bitterness and cynicism. "Dead and Alive" is hardly an adventure novel in the traditional sense. But it powerfully captures a moment in time, the aftermath of the euphoria of Victory in Europe during World War II.
David Cunningham and Stuart McCrae are both veterans of the British Navy. Cunningham is at loose ends, having just been demobilized. McCrae is living on a derelict British landing craft, shipwrecked in a cove off of Cornwall. The two become partners and manage to refloat the LCT. They decide to go into business together, using the craft to ship cargo to the Mediterranean. Before setting off on their first voyage, they agree to try and find a young woman, Monique Dupont, at her Mother's request. Monique was last known to be living in Naples.
"Dead and Alive" paints a grim and gloomy picture of post-war Italy. Corruption is rampant. Most Italians are trying to scrape out a living in a bombed-out country. The Black Marketers and gun-runners seem to be the only people who've profited from the war.
Cunningham and McCrae hardly feel like conquering heroes when they return to Italy. If anything, what they witness there just adds to their bitterness and cynicism. "Dead and Alive" is hardly an adventure novel in the traditional sense. But it powerfully captures a moment in time, the aftermath of the euphoria of Victory in Europe during World War II.
January 20, 2020
I liked this shortish old-fashioned novel about an adventure in Europe after the second world war. With old-fashioned I mean the kind of innocence even in a story where there was violence, criminals and prostitution. Nothing was described in bloody, detailed manner which is the trend nowadays.
A story about the salvation and refurbishment of a stranded WWII boat, more accurately a LCT (landing ship tank) and its new maiden voyage to Italy with materials (lorries, tobacco) to be traded and exchanged to something which would be valuable in England (e.g. vine and Italian spirits). Bilateral trade with a single ship.
When I was a teenager I liked Alistair MacLean's novels much more than Innes's books but I think Innes is actually a bit more to adult taste. I must check if my impression is correct and read again the other three novels I have from him.
The Finnish translation was also "old-fashioned" and there were some obvious mis-translations and some of the English idioms had been translated word by word which made them a bit funny. A child of its time.
Kuolleena ja elävänä
OTAVA 1962
A story about the salvation and refurbishment of a stranded WWII boat, more accurately a LCT (landing ship tank) and its new maiden voyage to Italy with materials (lorries, tobacco) to be traded and exchanged to something which would be valuable in England (e.g. vine and Italian spirits). Bilateral trade with a single ship.
When I was a teenager I liked Alistair MacLean's novels much more than Innes's books but I think Innes is actually a bit more to adult taste. I must check if my impression is correct and read again the other three novels I have from him.
The Finnish translation was also "old-fashioned" and there were some obvious mis-translations and some of the English idioms had been translated word by word which made them a bit funny. A child of its time.
Kuolleena ja elävänä
OTAVA 1962
June 24, 2021
I kinda like the way Innes describes war affects a country especially Italy and narrates to us how grim it is. The plot was intriguing in its era and interesting enough with a graphic description of what happens to the ex-soldier after leaving his position. I love the plot, but the romance wasn't needed enough for me.
July 24, 2018
Another very enjoyable read from Hammond Innes. Good characters and plot, the imagery excellent as always.
This is quite a short story, but has many twists and turns throughout.
This is quite a short story, but has many twists and turns throughout.
November 22, 2024
Melancholic and slightly bitter adventure novel about two British sailors on a quest in a post ww2 Italy.
September 4, 2015
I read this in the interests of research, needing some background information about skullduggery at sea. Not entirely fulfilled by this since it was written in 1946 when conversations were evidently longer-winded and better spoken and the gap between men and officers deep as Cheddar Gorge. But nevertheless well readable.
June 4, 2011
I have read Hammond Innes for many years, and he has always been one of my favorite asuthors. Probably read this many years ago and didn't remember; however it was well worth the read. Not only does this author provide pure adventure, he has amazing powers of descriptive prose.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews