Solomons Seal

by Hammond Innes

A beautiful young heiress, Perenna Holland, falls on hard times. She enlists Roy Slingsby, estate agent and bon vivant, to sell the family manse. Once into the assignment, he uncovers an album of stamps with a singular story to tell. Slingsby sets out to trace its origin. He joins a ship where the cargo is contraband, sails to an island seething with rebellion and finds the stamps are tied to a dark secret in Perenna's family. How will she take this information? "With all the power, suspense and authenticity that has attracted millions of readers to his work, SOLOMONS SEAL is a stirring novel of adventure in the grand manner of Hammond Innes." (Publisher's Source)

Genres: Fiction, Adventure, Thriller

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Ralph 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.

Reviews

[Sportyrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solomons Seal is a stamp shrouded in murder and mystery. Roy Slingsby, an English valuer comes across it for his client Pernella Holland (who has thrusting breasts). She leaves a stamp collection for him to sell whilst she mysteriously goes offgrid. Having very little reason to involve himself in the mystery, he proceeds to make his way to the Solomon Islands anyway to see if he can find Pernella and solve the mystery of why the stamps were so valuable.

The pace was problematic. The beginning was so good, was sitting at 5 stars. The exotic mystery felt similiar to that of an Agatha Christie book. The scene was set up so well. The journey leg of the book was dull, and there were small undulations chugging along until the ending where guns were fired, explosives detonated and buildings set alight. Many factions, vendettas, mysterious deaths, the confusing of victims with criminals, and the stamps. And all the while, this neutral guy, Slingsby at the centre of it all.

5 stars: the beginning, exotic setting, mystery involving stamps even though I don’t care about stamps, good writing.

Less stars: the middle, end, characters, plot, pace.

Overall, 3 stars but it was a slippery slope.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It all began so quietly, so very ordinarily – a routine job, something any junior in an estate agent’s office could have handled. [...]
Half my life gone and nothing to show for it – just an old car, an older boat, a few nice pieces of furniture and some stamps. No education, no qualifications, no bloody future, and now this piddling little contents sale thrust on me.

Hammond Innes knows how to lure the reader into the story. Put some bait on the line, such as a mysterious family heirloom and a beautiful woman with a troubled past in need of rescue, and there you are, ready to leave boring old England behind and sail halfway across the globe to the South West Pacific. Roy Slingsby, a former Navy officer in the war with a passion for collecting stamps and for sailing, is hooked by the exotic heiress Perenna Holland who needs to pay for her father’s hospital bills. Beside savage tribal masks and old furniture, Perenna has inherited two albums of old stamps of apparently modest value. But when Slingsby tries to price them out with specialists, odd things start to happen, all of them leading to a shipping line established by the girl’s grandfather in the Solomon Islands.

‘Suspicious bastard you are. Whatever the business ethics in your world, Roy, stamps are still a gentlemanly occupation.’

Yes, but apparently Perenna’s grandfather was more of a pirate than a gentleman. When his real estate job goes sour, Roy Slingsby realizes he has very little holding him down in England, and jumps at the chance to make an appraisal of a farm in remote Australia. Who knows? Maybe there will be a chance to find out more about Perenna’s family and about the origin of that curious, unique stamp design known as ‘Solomon’s Seal’.

‘You know, I’ve half a mind to pack it in here, let the tax boys have their last bite at me and go out there for good. There’s a sense of freedom, like a breath of fresh air. The sea, the fish, all that coral, and over the horizon to the north-east islands hardly anybody has ever seen. The Solomons, the Bismarcks; I never got as far as that. Only Papua New Guinea. But that was enough. One of the last primitive frontiers.’

By the time the present novel was published, Hammond Innes had a lot of practice at turning out solid adventure thrillers. The best of the lot were always those that dealt in one way or another with the sea. The reason became apparent when I read his biography, explaining how he combined business and pleasure: half of the year sailing the high seas, doing research for his next project, and half of the year dedicated to writing and publishing his work. The story of Roy Slingsby is the result of such a voyage the author took in 1975 to those remote West Pacific islands.

There were some dog-eared paperbacks on the shelf above my head, including Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus , but I couldn’t concentrate, which was probably just as well, since it wasn’t the ideal book to read in the circumstances.

My favorite part of the book is the middle section, describing the stormy passage from Australia to the Solomon Islands aboard a decommissioned Landing Craft Vehicle, captained by Perenna’s alcoholic brother and the last remaining ship of the old Holland Line. The references to Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson belong here and are a bittersweet reminder of my own teenage dreams of becoming a vagabond sailor.

That’s how I shall always remember Bougainville, the picture in my mind as vivid now as when I first saw it in the lingering freshness of that blazing morning. There was an overpowering sense of magnificence in those endless towering vistas of jungle green.

also,
She was an ugly vessel. At least I suppose she was, being totally functional, with no concessions to anything other than the purpose for which she had been designed. But to me she had the beauty of an unattainable dream.

But in the seventies, as much as it was in the times of Conrad and Stevenson, the paradise image of the islands is a hollow one. Colonialism, the scars left by the world war, modern corporate intervention in one of the largest copper mines in the world and inter-tribal rivalries make for an explosive mix that goes boom just as Roy Slingsby arrives in port. The Holland family is directly involved in the revolutionary movement somehow. Roy may consider himself lucky if he can escape this poisoned paradise with his skin intact.

A word of warning: These people – they look innocent enough, like children, smooth-skinned and smiling. Seeing them like that, you’d think there was no more friendly people in the Pacific. But just remember this, they were cannibals only two or three generations back, and they still eat people when they have a chance in the more remote parts of Papua.

I will gloss over actual details of the storms at sea and the armed confrontations on shore, also on the solution to the stamp mystery: after all, the reader deserves to arrive at destination on his or her own.
I was a fan of Hammond Innes before reading this, and I will continue to comb through his list, looking for interesting thrillers. He can be uneven in output, and I did have some serious issues with ‘Solomon’s Seal’, mainly regarding gratuitous sex scenes and active promotion of mysticism and paranormal activities (‘Primitive enough to believe in magic? Death wishes? That sort of thing?’) as a major part of the plot. But I never doubted his native talent as a storyteller and his love for the sea.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, this was unusual for me. Giving up on Hammond innes. But somehow I just couldn't stay interested in Roy Slingsy and the mystery he became entangled with. It involved a lovely young woman, some rare stamps, the Cargo cult of the South Pacific, and family secrets, or rather family nightmares.

The first couple of chapters were intriguing, but by around page 80 or so I was getting restless, overwhelmed by what seemed to be too much information about stamps (I used to collect so it wasn't exactly boring, just distracting) and a meandering style that I don't remember from other Innes titles I've enjoyed.

So I chose to DNF and to put this one in the giveaway pile.

Next!!

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a surprise, this book. For those interested in a particular niche within the adventure genre, it is nothing short of a masterpiece. I speak of contemporary (contemporary, here, meaning 1980) South Sea adventure stories. Indeed, the date of publication seems a bit of an anachronism. The entire time reading it, I felt as if I were reading something from the early to middle 1950s, not a work of the era of Thatcher, Carter, and Reagan. Primarily, that is because of the sense of seagoing isolation in the tale as well as the unreliable communication on land and in the air. Isolated heroes facing the harsh forces of nature, while being undermined by unscrupulous antagonists, is key to the genre.

What makes this book so special, however, is the mystery thread that runs through it. Built upon the nuances and minutia of stamp collecting, the plot launches out from the rustic English seaside to Australia and then the South Seas, in particular the islands Bougainville and Buka in Papua New Guinea. Along the way, the reader follows the tale of illicit cargoes, revolutions, and family curses. All the while, the story of generations is held together through the solving a philatelic crime and mystery.

Oh, yes, Innes also manages to insert a love story amidst the twisting and turning of family betrayal, hatreds, and jealousies. And all told against the backdrop of the sea. In some ways, this novel has a little Joseph Conrad, I'm thinking Lord Jim, in it, along with a dash of C.S. Forester.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in February 2001.

One of Hammond Innes' best thrillers is closely concerned with the unthrilling world of stamp collecting. Its hero works for a Suffolk estate agents, arranging sales mainly of the effects of the dead. When asked to make a valuation for sale of a property, he is intrigued (as an amateur collector himself) by an unusual stamp album, as well as by the young woman living in the house. The Holland family is connected to the Solomon Islands, and she wants to sell to cover the costs of care for her dying brother, whom she is convinced has been struck down by a witch doctor's curse.

The plot is then concerned with the origins of the stamp collection, the shipping line owned by the Holland family, and the feuds associated with its history, and comes together to make a convincing piece of action, more so than in most of Innes' novels.

[Laraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2-4 stars. Hammond Innes is a thriller writer who was quite famous years ago. I had a couple of his books and decided to re-read this one, as I read it before when it was first published in 1980. I really enjoyed the read. Roy is doing a contents valuation for his company and he finds the contents are not your usual kind and the woman selling the home is not your ordinary woman. These two facts start of a real adventure, when Roy heads down to the South Seas, to the Solomon Islands, part of Papua New Guinea in search of some elusive stamps, the Solomons Seals and Perenna Holland, the woman who has caught his imagination. His adventures are thrilling and involved curses, uprisings and evil men. I really enjoyed this book, and consider it to be a good read.

[Gu Kun · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - Once again, a highly original plot plus a highly original setting - trademark Innes - but somehow this thriller didn't really thrill - no moments of being spellbound.

[Nira Ramachandran · Rating 5 out of 5]

A chance encounter with the exotic Perenna Holland, part owner of the Holland Shipping Line, which operates in the south west Pacific, and Roy Slingsby, whose hopes of a partnership in the real estate firm where he works have just been dashed, is miraculously swept into an adventure just made to order for him. Perenna believes that her brother Tim whose life is fast ebbing away in hospital, has been jinxed and she can only undo the curse by tracing the perpetrator in the islands of New Guinea. Almost penniless, she entrusts her inheritance of two leatherbound stamp albums to Roy, who is an avid stamp collector, and takes on a job as stewardess in a cruise ship heading in that direction. Yet another stroke of luck brings an offer of a paid trip to Australia to close a property deal, and Roy secures a good bargain for Perenna’s albums and a substantial advance, and heads out on the journey. The deal concluded, he manages to unearth the one remaining vessel of the Holland Line, an LCT of the kind he operated as Deck Officer during the war, in Sydney Harbour , meets Perenna’s elder brother Jona, the captain and secures a working passage as deckie, to convert to Acting Officer, once they are out at sea. Sleep deprived and anxiety-ridden Jona has turned to drink to reduce his fears of bankruptcy and the kind of cargo he is transporting to cover his debts. Add to this combustious mixture, an old skipper of the Holland line in a constant drunken stupor, a shady Indian clerk who makes dubious deals, a native crew consisting of unfriendly inhabitants of the islands, the arrival of Perenna, who joins the ship mid-journey and a tense, turbulent voyage through the narrow passages between the islands dotting the south west Pacific. The admittedly strange members of the Holland clan, a dark secret underlying the animosity in the current generation, the constant tussle between the modern face of the newly independent nation of Papua New Guinea and the stranglehold of tribal beliefs and customs, the turbulent climate which turns from intense heat to torrential downpours in a matter of minutes, and we have all the ingredients for an adventure and romance quite different from any I’ve read before.

[Tom Mccutchan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all of the Hammond Innes books that I have read this is a good read. Based on the authors that I really enjoy, the inner me is a upper middle class, 30-something, British bachelor, with a taste for adventure, and a tendency to find it (and, sometimes, get the girl on the way). This one takes place mostly in the Solomon Islands and involves ships, as Hammond Innes novels tend to. There is a fairly complex part of the plot that involves stamps and family intrigue that I found hard to follow. Perhaps because I was kind of spotty in my reading sessions for this book.

[Noel Escalona · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read! I came across this book at a book sale and my interest peaked upon reading the first few pages. Being a Skipper of an LCT myself plying through various islands in the Philippine archipelago, I picked up all the lingo, maneuvers, ship life, and sea adventures of the world spun by Mr Hammond Innes. This book was written more than 40 years ago and I could not shake the thought of going through new trips at sea and seeing new islands excited of new adventures awaiting wherever and whenever. Bravo Zulu!

[Bowdoin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun and engaging read with good characters and a unique topic. Anyone with a collector's heart and a desire for vicarious world travel and escape from the hum-drum of everyday life could do much worse than this work. Full review below.

https://bowdoinplumer.wixsite.com/the...

[Albert Farrugia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reasonably engaging thriller set in Australia and the surrounding pacific nations, with a strong philatelic thread which should appeal to collectors.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this Hammond Innes novel immediately after Golden Soak reveals that by the latter part of his career Innes had hit on a formula. Take a middle aged Englishman with no ties, produce an attractive younger woman in need of some help, set up an issue of survival in an exotic location and weave a story. Here we move from Western Australia to Bougainville although Australia and large copper mines are still right in there. Add a family feud and some mystery to solve and you have it done. As a philatelist I was interested in how the Solomon's Seal stamps were used as an item of mystery and intrigue. I wonder though if Solomon's Seal's story of a family shipping company will echo elements of The Strode Venturer and The Wreck of the Mary Deare,.

[Frederick Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better book from the author. A helpless heiress, a dashing real estate agent (also a former army reservist) and exotic south pacific island will get your Adrenalin going. Throw in the usual romance and background family feud and insurrection and we will have a firecracker of a good read. I highly recommend this book.

[Pam]

07/18/08 purchase at librabry book sale room

[Martijn · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a bit slow for my taste, and I was not very impressed with the plot.

[Jeff Crosby]

I am not quite stalled, but progress is slow.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally finished. The conclusion is good. The sale of the stamps and the seal generate enough money for perenna and the narrator to but the LCT and continue running the Holland Line.

[David Cozens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Postage stamps and landing craft in the Solomon Islands.