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John Ingram #2
Dead Calm
John and Rae Ingram - the two characters who so fascinated readers of AGROUND - are alone on their honeymoon yacht in the mid-Pacific, when they are becalmed. It could have be idyllic. But they are soon forced to abandon any thoughts of solitary bliss.
Nearby, a ship is sinking. They rescue its lone passenger, a handsome young man, who claims he has had to bury his wife and another couple, dead from food poisoning.
But suspicion gnaws at Ingram. And in no time he and his wife are catapulted into a terrifying struggle for their lives.
Nearby, a ship is sinking. They rescue its lone passenger, a handsome young man, who claims he has had to bury his wife and another couple, dead from food poisoning.
But suspicion gnaws at Ingram. And in no time he and his wife are catapulted into a terrifying struggle for their lives.
230 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1963
48 people are currently reading
670 people want to read
About the author
Charles Williams
33 books99 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Charles Williams
Charles Williams was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years (1929-1939) before leaving to work in the electronics industry. He was a radio inspector during the war years at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Washington state. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime.
Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay.
After the death of his wife Lasca (m. 1939) from cancer in 1972, Williams purchased property on the California-Oregon border where he lived alone for a time in a trailer. After relocating to Los Angeles, Williams committed suicide in his apartment in the Van Nuys neighborhood in early April 1975. Williams had been depressed since the death of his wife, and his emotional state worsened as sales of his books declined when stand alone thrillers began to lose popularity in the early 70s. He was survived by a daughter, Alison.
Please see: Charles Williams
Charles Williams was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years (1929-1939) before leaving to work in the electronics industry. He was a radio inspector during the war years at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Washington state. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime.
Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay.
After the death of his wife Lasca (m. 1939) from cancer in 1972, Williams purchased property on the California-Oregon border where he lived alone for a time in a trailer. After relocating to Los Angeles, Williams committed suicide in his apartment in the Van Nuys neighborhood in early April 1975. Williams had been depressed since the death of his wife, and his emotional state worsened as sales of his books declined when stand alone thrillers began to lose popularity in the early 70s. He was survived by a daughter, Alison.
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July 21, 2019
My next appointment with hard-boiled fiction maestro Charles Williams is Dead Calm. Published in 1963, the novel appeared in condensed form as Pacific Honeymoon in the July 1963 issue of Cosmopolitan. This sequel to Aground reunites Captain John Ingram and his now wife Rae Ingram (née Osbourne) in their attempt to get away from it all. Williams' stories-- with their exotic locates, escalating tension and complex characters--proved popular with film producers and this novel was adapted memorably with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman in 1989. Offering more detail, additional characters and deeper psychological insight, I liked the book even more.
The story picks up less than a year after the events in Aground. Newlywed for four months, the Ingrams sold the Dragoon and purchased a yacht that two people could handle: the Saracen, a forty-foot ketch built for deep-water cruising. (The couple are considering the charter business in the Bahamas or West Indies.) Bound for Tahiti and the islands to the south, the Ingrams are tied to no schedule. Rising at 6 a.m. to log the hot, dead calm that provides no wind for their sails, Ingram spots a ship off the starboard bow. He wakes Rae, certain she'll be interested in the first sign of life since they left Panama seventeen days ago.
Their neighbor dead in the water three or four miles away, the Ingrams have time for breakfast and Rae a skinnydip before her husband spots a dinghy rowing over to them. It's occupied by a boyish and handsome blond in his early twenties whose nerves seem shot. He reports that his vessel has been sinking for days, but can't explain what happened to it. He introduces himself as Hughie Warriner and claims that his wife and the other couple on board died ten days ago of apparent food poisoning from spoiled canned salmon. Ingram becomes suspicious when Hughie refuses to return or agree to let Ingram board the vessel. Rae finds her husband's questions insensitive.
"Well, sure, honey," he protested. "I realize what he's been through. But we ought to make some attempt to salvage what we can."
"He doesn't want to go back on there. I'd think you could understand that."
"He doesn't have to. I told him I'd go."
"But why? He said there wasn't anything worth trying to save, didn't he?"
"I know. But obviously water wouldn't ruin everything. Clothes, for instance. Also, he contradicts himself."
"What do you mean?"
"The radio, remember? He said it's been ruined by water. But he'd just got through telling us he called us on it."
She sighed. "Why do men always have to be so literal? Do you think he's some kind of machine? John, dear, he lost his wife and his two friends all in one afternoon, and then spent the next ten days utterly alone on a sinking boat, and he probably hasn't closed his eyes for a week. I'd be doing well to remember my own name, unless I had it written down somewhere."
"All right--"
"Shhhhh! Not so loud."
"Okay. But you'd think he'd at least want to bring off some of her things, wouldn't you? And there was another thing I was about to explain to him. If that boat's insured, he's going to have a hell of a time trying to collect, with no logbook and just his unsupported word she was in sinking condition when he left her--in a dead calm, with no weather making up. The underwriters are going to ask for a statement from me, and I can't corroborate it. How can I? I'll just have to tell 'em she was afloat when I saw her. And that I hadn't even been aboard and didn't know how much water she was taking."
"He said she probably wouldn't last through the morning, and we're not going anywhere in this calm, so we'll still be in sight when she goes down. But let him get some sleep!"
"Sure. God knows, he probably needs it." Still vaguely dissatisfied, he tossed the sailbags into the other bunk and threw a lashing on them. He went back to the cockpit. Warriner was slumped behind the starboard seat with the binoculars beside him, as though he'd been looking at the other yacht. Sunlight struck golden fire in his hair, which had been crew-cut originally but had grown long over his ears. Handsome kid, Ingram thought, and then wondered if that could be the reason for his--well, not distrust, exactly. That was overstating it. Call it reservation.
Suspicious when Hughie refuses to go below for sleep until he sees the Saracen under way and his dinghy abandoned, Ingram circles back to pick the dinghy up and row over to the sinking yacht for a look. Berthed Orpheus in Santa Barbara, Ingram finds the boat an unseamanlike mess, heavy and sluggish and at least six inches below her normal waterline. The main cabin is filled with two feet of water, all as Hughie said it was, except Ingram finds the logbook hasn't been damaged by water at all. He discovers the door to the after cabin has been barricaded from the outside and opening it up, finds a dark-haired woman and a broad shouldered man, alive.
Spotting her husband trying to signal her and rowing the dinghy over in a hurry, Rae fires up the starter on the Saracen. The engine wakes Hughie, who knocks Rae unconscious and takes control of the wheel. Ingram gets within three feet of the yacht but can neither wake his wife to jump or leap aboard himself. He returns to the Orpheus and assumes command, instructing the two survivors to help him start pumping the water out of the boat. Ingram gets attitude from the male, a macho travel writer named Russ Bellew and more cooperation from the more capable of the two, Hughie's wife, Lillian Warriner.
While Mrs. Warriner explains how she came to marry Hughie, end up with the Bellews aboard the Orpheus and Estelle Bellew was killed, Ingram realizes that the chances of Hughie turning around are nil, bad news considering that their boat is infected with dry rot and sinking. Aboard the Saracen, Hughie plots a course for the Marquesas Islands and luckily for Rae, isn't thinking very far ahead. Her captor remains amiable as long as Rae doesn't mention turning back for her husband, Hughie convinced the others tried to kill him. Rae realizes the more distance he puts between them and the Orpheus the less chance she'll have in saving her husband and the others from the sea.
"Would she panic easily?" Mrs. Warriner asked.
"No," Ingram said. "I don't think she'd panic at all. Look, she's no high-school girl, or jittery old maid with the vapors. She's thirty-five years old, and she was married twice before she married me. Men are nothing new and startling to her. She's never had to deal with an unbalanced one before, but she has been in tight spots, and she's clever and coolheaded and she learns fast. She tried to fight him to get back the wheel when he took it away from her, but all that happened very fast and it was pure reflex. If she survived--" His voice broke off, and he pulled savagely at the shoelace he was knotting. "If she survived that time, she'd know better than to antagonize him again. She'll play it by ear."
"Is there a weapon of any kind aboard?"
He nodded. "A shotgun."
Their eyes met again. Then she shivered slightly and looked down at the cigarette in her hands. Her voice was very small as she asked, "Could she?"
"I don't know," he said. "Does anybody, till he's faced with it?"
Charles Williams has fast become one of my favorite authors, an excellent companion through the currents of nautical crime fiction to his contemporary, John D. MacDonald. While MacDonald bathes his Travis McGee mysteries with existential angst, Williams' novels run like a yacht skippered by John Ingram; there isn't a wasted plot thread, dialogue or paragraph. Authorial attitude is invisible. Every page throttles the story forward. Williams really outdoes himself with Dead Calm in detailing how royally screwed the Ingrams are once they become separated at sea by a paranoid schizophrenic who can't be overpowered or reasoned with. Author absolutely knows his territory.
He'd acquired his first catboat at the age of twelve, and, except for two years at the University of Texas on the GI Bill just after World War II, he'd been around salt water and around boats ever since, most of his adult life as a professional. He'd captained a towboat in Mexico, worked on salvage jobs in half a dozen countries and three oceans, owned and skippered a charter yacht in the Bahamas, and up until eighteen months ago operated a shipyard in Puerto Rico. He'd been in an explosion and fire, and inevitably he'd seen bad weather and some that was worse, but at the moment he didn't believe he'd ever been in a position quite as hopeless as this.
I love novels, thrillers particularly, dealing with highly skilled protagonists tested by extraordinary circumstances and Dead Calm is a great one. What I appreciated even more is the time that Williams takes to explore the psychology of his antagonist, Hughie Warriner, who isn't evil but has been pushed over the edge by the ocean that Williams knows well. This deeper quality, as well as the tension created by Mr. Bellew and Mrs. Warriner, were absent in an otherwise exciting Australian film adaptation in 1989, which promoted Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman into global stars shortly thereafter with Jurassic Park and Days of Thunder, respectively.
The story picks up less than a year after the events in Aground. Newlywed for four months, the Ingrams sold the Dragoon and purchased a yacht that two people could handle: the Saracen, a forty-foot ketch built for deep-water cruising. (The couple are considering the charter business in the Bahamas or West Indies.) Bound for Tahiti and the islands to the south, the Ingrams are tied to no schedule. Rising at 6 a.m. to log the hot, dead calm that provides no wind for their sails, Ingram spots a ship off the starboard bow. He wakes Rae, certain she'll be interested in the first sign of life since they left Panama seventeen days ago.
Their neighbor dead in the water three or four miles away, the Ingrams have time for breakfast and Rae a skinnydip before her husband spots a dinghy rowing over to them. It's occupied by a boyish and handsome blond in his early twenties whose nerves seem shot. He reports that his vessel has been sinking for days, but can't explain what happened to it. He introduces himself as Hughie Warriner and claims that his wife and the other couple on board died ten days ago of apparent food poisoning from spoiled canned salmon. Ingram becomes suspicious when Hughie refuses to return or agree to let Ingram board the vessel. Rae finds her husband's questions insensitive.
"Well, sure, honey," he protested. "I realize what he's been through. But we ought to make some attempt to salvage what we can."
"He doesn't want to go back on there. I'd think you could understand that."
"He doesn't have to. I told him I'd go."
"But why? He said there wasn't anything worth trying to save, didn't he?"
"I know. But obviously water wouldn't ruin everything. Clothes, for instance. Also, he contradicts himself."
"What do you mean?"
"The radio, remember? He said it's been ruined by water. But he'd just got through telling us he called us on it."
She sighed. "Why do men always have to be so literal? Do you think he's some kind of machine? John, dear, he lost his wife and his two friends all in one afternoon, and then spent the next ten days utterly alone on a sinking boat, and he probably hasn't closed his eyes for a week. I'd be doing well to remember my own name, unless I had it written down somewhere."
"All right--"
"Shhhhh! Not so loud."
"Okay. But you'd think he'd at least want to bring off some of her things, wouldn't you? And there was another thing I was about to explain to him. If that boat's insured, he's going to have a hell of a time trying to collect, with no logbook and just his unsupported word she was in sinking condition when he left her--in a dead calm, with no weather making up. The underwriters are going to ask for a statement from me, and I can't corroborate it. How can I? I'll just have to tell 'em she was afloat when I saw her. And that I hadn't even been aboard and didn't know how much water she was taking."
"He said she probably wouldn't last through the morning, and we're not going anywhere in this calm, so we'll still be in sight when she goes down. But let him get some sleep!"
"Sure. God knows, he probably needs it." Still vaguely dissatisfied, he tossed the sailbags into the other bunk and threw a lashing on them. He went back to the cockpit. Warriner was slumped behind the starboard seat with the binoculars beside him, as though he'd been looking at the other yacht. Sunlight struck golden fire in his hair, which had been crew-cut originally but had grown long over his ears. Handsome kid, Ingram thought, and then wondered if that could be the reason for his--well, not distrust, exactly. That was overstating it. Call it reservation.
Suspicious when Hughie refuses to go below for sleep until he sees the Saracen under way and his dinghy abandoned, Ingram circles back to pick the dinghy up and row over to the sinking yacht for a look. Berthed Orpheus in Santa Barbara, Ingram finds the boat an unseamanlike mess, heavy and sluggish and at least six inches below her normal waterline. The main cabin is filled with two feet of water, all as Hughie said it was, except Ingram finds the logbook hasn't been damaged by water at all. He discovers the door to the after cabin has been barricaded from the outside and opening it up, finds a dark-haired woman and a broad shouldered man, alive.
Spotting her husband trying to signal her and rowing the dinghy over in a hurry, Rae fires up the starter on the Saracen. The engine wakes Hughie, who knocks Rae unconscious and takes control of the wheel. Ingram gets within three feet of the yacht but can neither wake his wife to jump or leap aboard himself. He returns to the Orpheus and assumes command, instructing the two survivors to help him start pumping the water out of the boat. Ingram gets attitude from the male, a macho travel writer named Russ Bellew and more cooperation from the more capable of the two, Hughie's wife, Lillian Warriner.
While Mrs. Warriner explains how she came to marry Hughie, end up with the Bellews aboard the Orpheus and Estelle Bellew was killed, Ingram realizes that the chances of Hughie turning around are nil, bad news considering that their boat is infected with dry rot and sinking. Aboard the Saracen, Hughie plots a course for the Marquesas Islands and luckily for Rae, isn't thinking very far ahead. Her captor remains amiable as long as Rae doesn't mention turning back for her husband, Hughie convinced the others tried to kill him. Rae realizes the more distance he puts between them and the Orpheus the less chance she'll have in saving her husband and the others from the sea.
"Would she panic easily?" Mrs. Warriner asked.
"No," Ingram said. "I don't think she'd panic at all. Look, she's no high-school girl, or jittery old maid with the vapors. She's thirty-five years old, and she was married twice before she married me. Men are nothing new and startling to her. She's never had to deal with an unbalanced one before, but she has been in tight spots, and she's clever and coolheaded and she learns fast. She tried to fight him to get back the wheel when he took it away from her, but all that happened very fast and it was pure reflex. If she survived--" His voice broke off, and he pulled savagely at the shoelace he was knotting. "If she survived that time, she'd know better than to antagonize him again. She'll play it by ear."
"Is there a weapon of any kind aboard?"
He nodded. "A shotgun."
Their eyes met again. Then she shivered slightly and looked down at the cigarette in her hands. Her voice was very small as she asked, "Could she?"
"I don't know," he said. "Does anybody, till he's faced with it?"
Charles Williams has fast become one of my favorite authors, an excellent companion through the currents of nautical crime fiction to his contemporary, John D. MacDonald. While MacDonald bathes his Travis McGee mysteries with existential angst, Williams' novels run like a yacht skippered by John Ingram; there isn't a wasted plot thread, dialogue or paragraph. Authorial attitude is invisible. Every page throttles the story forward. Williams really outdoes himself with Dead Calm in detailing how royally screwed the Ingrams are once they become separated at sea by a paranoid schizophrenic who can't be overpowered or reasoned with. Author absolutely knows his territory.
He'd acquired his first catboat at the age of twelve, and, except for two years at the University of Texas on the GI Bill just after World War II, he'd been around salt water and around boats ever since, most of his adult life as a professional. He'd captained a towboat in Mexico, worked on salvage jobs in half a dozen countries and three oceans, owned and skippered a charter yacht in the Bahamas, and up until eighteen months ago operated a shipyard in Puerto Rico. He'd been in an explosion and fire, and inevitably he'd seen bad weather and some that was worse, but at the moment he didn't believe he'd ever been in a position quite as hopeless as this.
I love novels, thrillers particularly, dealing with highly skilled protagonists tested by extraordinary circumstances and Dead Calm is a great one. What I appreciated even more is the time that Williams takes to explore the psychology of his antagonist, Hughie Warriner, who isn't evil but has been pushed over the edge by the ocean that Williams knows well. This deeper quality, as well as the tension created by Mr. Bellew and Mrs. Warriner, were absent in an otherwise exciting Australian film adaptation in 1989, which promoted Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman into global stars shortly thereafter with Jurassic Park and Days of Thunder, respectively.
May 9, 2023
What happens when four unstable personalities are trapped together in a tiny cabin on a boat lost and without power in the middle of the South Pacific? How do those four individuals deal with the constantly worsening situation as the boat starts to take on water and rot away? Do the couples wrap themselves up in petty jealousies and bickering? Do they blame each other when things start to go wrong? What happens when one of these people was a bit off his rocker to begin with? Can he really be blamed for what goes wrong? Consumed by paranoia, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, what if he abandons the slowly sinking ship and climbs onto another small sailing vessel? Will the couple on that vessel take him away from there - from where his wife was possibly plotting with another man to drown him in that mighty ocean?
In 1960, Charles Williams published "Aground," a novel about a search for a stolen sailing ship, a ship that had run aground, gunrunning criminals holding a couple at gunpoint, desperation, and a romance that bloomed between an older sea captain with a gimpy leg and a twice-widowed blonde who was tougher than anyone could ever have imagined.
In 1962, Charles Williams published "Dead Calm," a novel in which he took these two characters, Captain John Ingram and Rae, had them trade the big vessel they recaptured in "Aground" and trade it for a smaller, sleeker, two-person sailboat and set them off on a months-long honeymoon jaunt around the world. At one point in "Dead Calm," Rae actually sits down and tells the entire tale of the novel "Aground" to explain how she first met her husband and how neither one really like the other at first, but fell in love after five adventurous days in the Atlantic.
"They were nineteen days out of the Canal, bound for Tahiti and the islands to the south, tied to no schedule, free of the frustrations and annoyances of life ashore." They found Warriner floating in a dinghy, who tells them his boat over there is sinking and everyone else on it succumbed to food poisoning. Ingram doesn't quite buy everything this young man is selling. Something doesn't feel right about things he says, how he says them. When Ingram goes to the other boat to look around, Warriner takes off with Rae still on Ingram's boat, leaving Ingram behind on a leaking, sinking boat to pick up the broken pieces of what went on that second boat, marooned for ten days in the middle of nowhere with four people at each other's throats. Ingram was "more scared then he had ever been in his life, and the whole scene came to him through the winy haze of a desire to get his hands on Warriner and kill him, but there was no time to give way to futile emotion." He is told that Warriner is a lunatic, a crazy man, that there is no telling what he will do.
The descriptions that Williams gives of the sea and sky and the emotions running through Ingram and Rae are just perfectly written: "This might be the last time he would ever see her," Ingram thinks, "this dwindling spot of color fading away toward the outer limit of binoculars, but that was something he couldn't think about. If he lost his head, there was no chance at all." "The air was like warm damp cotton pressing in on them, muggy, saturated, unmoving. Perspiration didn't evaporate. It collected in a film over the body, a film that became rivulets, now running, now stopping momentarily, now moving again with the irritating feel of insects crawling across the skin." You can really feel how Williams has matured as a writer in reading this - how he creates a feel for what it was like out there in the middle of the ocean with the sun burning down and no rescue anywhere in sight.
This is not a story of good and evil. Warriner is dangerous, but he is not just some mean, nasty criminal. Ingram and Rae already dealt with those types in "Aground." Instead, Warriner is a crazy person. He is out of his mind. Part of the book is how Rae deals with someone who she just can't reason with and how the people in this book choose whether or not to assign blame to someone who is out of his mind with paranoia. The characters here and how they relate to each other are extremely complicated.
It is one terrific, top-notch piece of writing and is a solid thriller. Great reading.
Most people are familiar with "Dead Calm" because of the Nicole Kidman movie that came out thirty years after the book. I can't emphasize enough how different the book is from that movie and how much of a license the screenwriters took with changing the story and the characters. The book fleshes out all the characters (including the ones who never appear in the movie), their histories, and their complicated relationships. The movie makes the Warriner character just a simple bad guy, instead of a complex guy who is half-out-of-his- mind and perhaps not fully responsible for his actions. Rae is not young and helpless like the Kidman character and she doesn't seduce the bad guy. Read the book. Skip the movie.
In 1960, Charles Williams published "Aground," a novel about a search for a stolen sailing ship, a ship that had run aground, gunrunning criminals holding a couple at gunpoint, desperation, and a romance that bloomed between an older sea captain with a gimpy leg and a twice-widowed blonde who was tougher than anyone could ever have imagined.
In 1962, Charles Williams published "Dead Calm," a novel in which he took these two characters, Captain John Ingram and Rae, had them trade the big vessel they recaptured in "Aground" and trade it for a smaller, sleeker, two-person sailboat and set them off on a months-long honeymoon jaunt around the world. At one point in "Dead Calm," Rae actually sits down and tells the entire tale of the novel "Aground" to explain how she first met her husband and how neither one really like the other at first, but fell in love after five adventurous days in the Atlantic.
"They were nineteen days out of the Canal, bound for Tahiti and the islands to the south, tied to no schedule, free of the frustrations and annoyances of life ashore." They found Warriner floating in a dinghy, who tells them his boat over there is sinking and everyone else on it succumbed to food poisoning. Ingram doesn't quite buy everything this young man is selling. Something doesn't feel right about things he says, how he says them. When Ingram goes to the other boat to look around, Warriner takes off with Rae still on Ingram's boat, leaving Ingram behind on a leaking, sinking boat to pick up the broken pieces of what went on that second boat, marooned for ten days in the middle of nowhere with four people at each other's throats. Ingram was "more scared then he had ever been in his life, and the whole scene came to him through the winy haze of a desire to get his hands on Warriner and kill him, but there was no time to give way to futile emotion." He is told that Warriner is a lunatic, a crazy man, that there is no telling what he will do.
The descriptions that Williams gives of the sea and sky and the emotions running through Ingram and Rae are just perfectly written: "This might be the last time he would ever see her," Ingram thinks, "this dwindling spot of color fading away toward the outer limit of binoculars, but that was something he couldn't think about. If he lost his head, there was no chance at all." "The air was like warm damp cotton pressing in on them, muggy, saturated, unmoving. Perspiration didn't evaporate. It collected in a film over the body, a film that became rivulets, now running, now stopping momentarily, now moving again with the irritating feel of insects crawling across the skin." You can really feel how Williams has matured as a writer in reading this - how he creates a feel for what it was like out there in the middle of the ocean with the sun burning down and no rescue anywhere in sight.
This is not a story of good and evil. Warriner is dangerous, but he is not just some mean, nasty criminal. Ingram and Rae already dealt with those types in "Aground." Instead, Warriner is a crazy person. He is out of his mind. Part of the book is how Rae deals with someone who she just can't reason with and how the people in this book choose whether or not to assign blame to someone who is out of his mind with paranoia. The characters here and how they relate to each other are extremely complicated.
It is one terrific, top-notch piece of writing and is a solid thriller. Great reading.
Most people are familiar with "Dead Calm" because of the Nicole Kidman movie that came out thirty years after the book. I can't emphasize enough how different the book is from that movie and how much of a license the screenwriters took with changing the story and the characters. The book fleshes out all the characters (including the ones who never appear in the movie), their histories, and their complicated relationships. The movie makes the Warriner character just a simple bad guy, instead of a complex guy who is half-out-of-his- mind and perhaps not fully responsible for his actions. Rae is not young and helpless like the Kidman character and she doesn't seduce the bad guy. Read the book. Skip the movie.
June 22, 2012
I discovered this book by checking out the credits for the 1989 movie of the same name. While the movie was OK in a pulpy horror clicheed way and memorable only for the occasional glimpse of Nicole Kidman in deshabille, I remembered the claustrophobic menace of being stranded on a very small ship in the company of a madman. The original novel has this tension in spades, and as a bonus I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing and the careful exploration of character motivations.
John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon and have chosen to spend it crossing the Pacific Ocean in their small sailboat Saracen . Caught in the windless, stifling equatorial latitudes, they come upon a stranded vessel and pick up a lone man fleeing what he claims to be a sinking ship and an extreme case of food poisoning that has killed his three sailing mates. The twist is soon deployed as John goes to investigate the accident of the second ship ( Orpheus ) and the young man runs away with Rae and the Saracen .
More than anything else the premise reminds me of Hitchcock, something to be expected for a novel published in 1963. The isolation of his actors from the outside world, the hints at imminent danger and the threat of physical violence, the ambiguity about the main character's sanity and the layman attempt at psychoanalysis are all trademarks of the master of suspense. Hughie Warriner - the young man with debilitating phobias about drowning, volatile temperament and repressed memories of a bullying father and a smothering mother - is for me based clearly on Norman Bates and I kept imagining him played by Anthony Perkins rather than Billy Zane.
Two major differences exist between the book and the movie, and I prefer Charles Williams treatment in both. First: on the stranded ship John meets the surviving two members of the crew and finds out how dangerous Hughie really is. The dynamics between the original two couples on the Orpheus - the Warriners and the Bellews - are subtle, captivating and credible compared with the insane serial killer Hollywood staple. I'm not getting into details, I'll only put this quote as a teaser:
Human beings confined in too small an area were apparently subject to the same laws regarding molecular friction and the generation of heat as gases under compression
Second: even more interesting to follow are the mind games and the rational analysis of the situation by Rae as she is struggling to wrest control of the Saracen from the paranoid Hughie. Beside the edge of the seat tension and the explosive moments of action, I liked Rae better than any other character in the book for her level headed response when faced with extreme danger, her refusal to accept defeat and her moral scruples. Taking another man's life is a not an endeavour to be undertaken casually or flippantly, and Williams was more convincing in showing her mental processes than in his amateur psychoanalysis of Hugghie motivations. One more point in favor of the book over the movie is .
One aspect of the book that I think was handled extremely well is the actual sailing stuff. Williams appears as someone who knows what he is talking about when he mentions different types of sail and tackle, compass magnetic compensation or blind navigation. He must have spent some quality time around sail boats.
If I was to find something to grumble about, it is the presentation of the backstory for the main characters, done in longish monologues with random transitions from third person to first person. The ending, while excellently written and plotted, is a return to the commercial requirements of the pulpy horror genre, and a bit of a letdown, but still several classes above the already mentioned movie. In fact, I keep wondering how awesome it would be if Orson Welles had finished his 1970 project of filming the book.
This was my first Charles Williams novel, and I plan to continue reading his thrillers, probably with The Hot Spot / Hell Hath No Fury - another of his books to receive the movie adaptation.
Read
December 17, 2023A superior thriller--the first 50 pages really crackle. Some of the later psychologizing is a bit dodgy, but my only real complaint is that the malevolent gods prevented Orson Welles from finishing his film adaptation of the book. The movie with Zane and Kidman is kind of a joke.
May 15, 2023
01/2016
Breathtaking suspense, integral to the well structured plot. So much good momentum I choose to ignore the awkward mid chapter perspective shifts and other mild flaws.
Breathtaking suspense, integral to the well structured plot. So much good momentum I choose to ignore the awkward mid chapter perspective shifts and other mild flaws.
September 2, 2024
I watched the movie when it first came out. It was my first exposure the Nicole Kidman and I thought she was amazing in it. Like is often the case, the book is actually better (except for missing Nicole Kidman) with a more nuanced plot. The characters were interesting, bordering on Patricia Highsmith intensity. I liked the story, the narrative drive, and the characters. Nearly perfect. No wonder even Orson Wells considered making a movie out of it.
September 24, 2022
The second most famous novel by one of my favorite writers. Hollywood (actually Australia) even made an unwatchable movie based on it. Pompous critics love this book. I could not get into it. It had many of the elements I like. It starts off with a couple vacationing in the ocean. The lady is swimming naked in the water. But it got too technical. Contrary to popular belief, artists who make and write exactly what they want are usually boring. I am sure there are notable exceptions. The villain was annoying. It was all too far fetched. Orson Welles made a film based on this but it was never released. Atleast the overrated legend had good taste in writers even though he picked the wrong novel. I should probably give this another try.
April 19, 2021
Look, I like when books don’t hold the reader’s hand and explain everything, and I’m a big fan of Williams’ pulp crime fiction, but my god does he assume I know A LOT about boats and sailing here.
July 10, 2015
8/7 - An impressive knowledge of boat and sailing terms that kind of boggles the mind of a reader who is almost completely clueless about all things nautical. Most of the time I have no idea what action of the boat (or is it a ship?) is being described. For example this sentence:
"He cast off the genoa sheet, carried the sail forward around the stay and outside the starboard shrouds, and trimmed the sheet on the port tack."
I can't visualise what's happening during that sentence, at all. Other than being at a complete loss as to what Ingram is doing when he's driving the boat I'm enjoying the story. The atmosphere was quite tense before Warriner revealed himself, when we didn't know exactly what the situation was, whether all of his fellow shipmates were dead or not. Once we knew what Warriner had, and hadn't done the tension dissolved out of the story. It's a shame the tension had to disappear so early on in the book. I was expecting the mystery of what had happened on the boat - who was dead and how, etc. - to be dragged out for much longer. But signs of life are revealed at only page 42, and the rest of the story is told over the next 20 pages or so. We know pretty much everything there is to know way before the halfway mark. To be continued...
9/7 - I had every intention of finishing this last night, but I kind of flung my book down in disgust when Rae decided that she just couldn't kill Warriner despite the fact that her sentimentality over her kidnapper could likely mean the death of her husband. I'm sorry but if it's a choice between killing a crazy person who is not in their right mind (and therefore legally not responsible for their actions) or allowing them to continue kidnapping me and leaving someone I love in a situation that is very likely to result in their death, I would feel no compunction about killing them as soon as I had the means and opportunity. When I go back to it tonight, with 24 hours having passed, I think I'll be able to go on and finish it. To be continued...
10/7 - The tension ratcheted back up when Rae finally managed to get back to Ingram, Mrs Warriner, and Mr Bellew (funny how everyone except Rae goes by their last name) just in time to rescue them. I found the climax of the story quite satisfying, everyone got what they deserved and I would have found it hard to believe that everyone would've survived to make landfall if things hadn't turned out as they did. There was no way Bellew and Warriner could have spent any time together trapped on a two person yacht without someone committing violence.
"He cast off the genoa sheet, carried the sail forward around the stay and outside the starboard shrouds, and trimmed the sheet on the port tack."
I can't visualise what's happening during that sentence, at all. Other than being at a complete loss as to what Ingram is doing when he's driving the boat I'm enjoying the story. The atmosphere was quite tense before Warriner revealed himself, when we didn't know exactly what the situation was, whether all of his fellow shipmates were dead or not. Once we knew what Warriner had, and hadn't done the tension dissolved out of the story. It's a shame the tension had to disappear so early on in the book. I was expecting the mystery of what had happened on the boat - who was dead and how, etc. - to be dragged out for much longer. But signs of life are revealed at only page 42, and the rest of the story is told over the next 20 pages or so. We know pretty much everything there is to know way before the halfway mark. To be continued...
9/7 - I had every intention of finishing this last night, but I kind of flung my book down in disgust when Rae decided that she just couldn't kill Warriner despite the fact that her sentimentality over her kidnapper could likely mean the death of her husband. I'm sorry but if it's a choice between killing a crazy person who is not in their right mind (and therefore legally not responsible for their actions) or allowing them to continue kidnapping me and leaving someone I love in a situation that is very likely to result in their death, I would feel no compunction about killing them as soon as I had the means and opportunity. When I go back to it tonight, with 24 hours having passed, I think I'll be able to go on and finish it. To be continued...
10/7 - The tension ratcheted back up when Rae finally managed to get back to Ingram, Mrs Warriner, and Mr Bellew (funny how everyone except Rae goes by their last name) just in time to rescue them. I found the climax of the story quite satisfying, everyone got what they deserved and I would have found it hard to believe that everyone would've survived to make landfall if things hadn't turned out as they did. There was no way Bellew and Warriner could have spent any time together trapped on a two person yacht without someone committing violence.
October 19, 2025
Dead Calm, based on the novel by Charles Williams
9 out of 10
A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Dead Calm is one of those very rare horror movies that I enjoy.
It is also true that I had not known it was considered horror or else I would avoid it, given I am no fan of the genre.
- “Try to stay Calm”
This is the very good tagline.
And it is not impossible to follow the advice, for parts of the film were The Dead Calm of the ocean is the main personage.
The cast is Outstanding:
- Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane
- This is all there is…And of course: the Magnificent Ocean
Nicole Kidman is a very interesting actress.
In this superb production, she is at her best.
In her early days, the Australian was charismatic, outré, attractive, ingenious, mysterious, exotic and creative.
Knowing about her other side does not help one enjoy her roles and she is less fascinating in my view, at least in recent years.
It is good that she is no longer associated with the outlandish “religion” of her ex-husband, but she is still strange from where I see her.
In Dead Calm she plays Rae Ingram
She is married to John Ingram, portrayed by the excellent actor- Sam Neill.
The only other player left in this intriguing drama is Hughie Warriner- Billy Zane can be terrifying in this role.
The Ocean strikes me as the other key participant, albeit bringing an inhuman participation to this marvel.
Rae and John take time off sailing in the Pacific and enjoying the majesty and dead Calm of the waters.
When they come across a survivor from a ship accident.
The “accident” in question seems to have some hidden, sinister significance and I will obviously not divulge its secret.
The couple is very sympathetic and happy to have saved a man with little hope of being rescued in the middle of nowhere.
John is off to the still floating vessel on which Hughie had sailed and in typical manner for thrillers surprises abound.
Rae is stupendous:
- A determined, brave, inventive, gritty, strong, relentless, smart, Super and Cat coupled with Spider WOMAN!!
It is a wondrous “real horror show” to watch her.
- She finds solutions where I could see none
- With escapist talent she gets out of trouble
John is a worthy partner.
He puts up a brave fight.
The film is dramatic and exceptional.
With a simple plot and without spilling gallons of blood, the effect is still phenomenal:
- I was on the edge of the seat
And now for a quote:
“[assuming it's her husband that is washing her hair]
Rae Ingram: You know what I'd love for lunch? Fresh asparagus, then, um, pasta - angel hair pasta with heaps of basil, garlic, olive oil and, um, apple pie. Yeah. Uh, John, have you got a towel?”
9 out of 10
A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Dead Calm is one of those very rare horror movies that I enjoy.
It is also true that I had not known it was considered horror or else I would avoid it, given I am no fan of the genre.
- “Try to stay Calm”
This is the very good tagline.
And it is not impossible to follow the advice, for parts of the film were The Dead Calm of the ocean is the main personage.
The cast is Outstanding:
- Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane
- This is all there is…And of course: the Magnificent Ocean
Nicole Kidman is a very interesting actress.
In this superb production, she is at her best.
In her early days, the Australian was charismatic, outré, attractive, ingenious, mysterious, exotic and creative.
Knowing about her other side does not help one enjoy her roles and she is less fascinating in my view, at least in recent years.
It is good that she is no longer associated with the outlandish “religion” of her ex-husband, but she is still strange from where I see her.
In Dead Calm she plays Rae Ingram
She is married to John Ingram, portrayed by the excellent actor- Sam Neill.
The only other player left in this intriguing drama is Hughie Warriner- Billy Zane can be terrifying in this role.
The Ocean strikes me as the other key participant, albeit bringing an inhuman participation to this marvel.
Rae and John take time off sailing in the Pacific and enjoying the majesty and dead Calm of the waters.
When they come across a survivor from a ship accident.
The “accident” in question seems to have some hidden, sinister significance and I will obviously not divulge its secret.
The couple is very sympathetic and happy to have saved a man with little hope of being rescued in the middle of nowhere.
John is off to the still floating vessel on which Hughie had sailed and in typical manner for thrillers surprises abound.
Rae is stupendous:
- A determined, brave, inventive, gritty, strong, relentless, smart, Super and Cat coupled with Spider WOMAN!!
It is a wondrous “real horror show” to watch her.
- She finds solutions where I could see none
- With escapist talent she gets out of trouble
John is a worthy partner.
He puts up a brave fight.
The film is dramatic and exceptional.
With a simple plot and without spilling gallons of blood, the effect is still phenomenal:
- I was on the edge of the seat
And now for a quote:
“[assuming it's her husband that is washing her hair]
Rae Ingram: You know what I'd love for lunch? Fresh asparagus, then, um, pasta - angel hair pasta with heaps of basil, garlic, olive oil and, um, apple pie. Yeah. Uh, John, have you got a towel?”
September 19, 2023
Psychoanalysis is vapid and is best left in 1963 as this book’s unironically meta-reference to sounding like ‘cocktail-party psychiatrists’ blames the psychotic’s devilishly handsome good looks and being adored by women on making him the true irrational psychotic that he is, and he wasn’t really trying to kill that other person he was just trying to kill his Dad because of his past trauma, and all sane people in this story have to do is help him discover his unconscious latent reasons in order to cure his psychotic irrational behavior.
This book is the third of nine within the series “Crime Novels of the 1960s”. The author’s story and plot is the best of the novellas so far, but his psychoanalysis is laughably stupid today while constantly integrating a phony structure for his narrative, and the modern reader gets a chance to laugh at how the hoi polloi of 1963 thought they understood human psychology within a Jacques Lacan (see Ecrit and think about his first essay on the Purloin Letter for example) psychoanalytical framework of the unconscious controlling everything with it being necessary for a shrink to unwrap the id such that the superego prevails.
There is really no way one can read this book and not note the psycho mumbo-jumbo that drives the narrative. For today’s reader it provides a look at how the world wrongly thought about psychology and one gets even more grateful for not having to deal with that paradigmatic non-sense.
This book is the third of nine within the series “Crime Novels of the 1960s”. The author’s story and plot is the best of the novellas so far, but his psychoanalysis is laughably stupid today while constantly integrating a phony structure for his narrative, and the modern reader gets a chance to laugh at how the hoi polloi of 1963 thought they understood human psychology within a Jacques Lacan (see Ecrit and think about his first essay on the Purloin Letter for example) psychoanalytical framework of the unconscious controlling everything with it being necessary for a shrink to unwrap the id such that the superego prevails.
There is really no way one can read this book and not note the psycho mumbo-jumbo that drives the narrative. For today’s reader it provides a look at how the world wrongly thought about psychology and one gets even more grateful for not having to deal with that paradigmatic non-sense.
August 19, 2025
A straightforward nautical thriller about the resourceful seadog John Ingram and his wife Rae sailing the Pacific on their honeymoon when they come across a seemingly deserted vessel. However, one lone survivor struggles aboard with a tale of an outbreak of botulism that left three dead on a sinking ship. But something about his manner doesn't sit well with John and soon his dream honeymoon turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival.
This was a pretty good page turner about keeping your head in dire situations and not going to pieces that while keeping things simple, also manages to get in convincing back stories for the characters to help make them feel believable. I would have preferred a mutant shark or at least one ghost pirate but not bad for a slow afternoon reading.
This was a pretty good page turner about keeping your head in dire situations and not going to pieces that while keeping things simple, also manages to get in convincing back stories for the characters to help make them feel believable. I would have preferred a mutant shark or at least one ghost pirate but not bad for a slow afternoon reading.
September 25, 2014
The first third of this tale of madness upon the wide-open and still Pacific was five-star. It slowed dramatically for me -- part of that was Williams' purpose for effect, I'm sure -- in a drone of monotonous psycho-analysis. As other reviewers note, there's a ton of nautical yachting jargon throughout. I found much of it both interesting and entertaining, but then came times when it created a hindrance to the read. A good and original story. I'll continue to read more books of Charles Williams.
March 8, 2017
*3.5*
August 15, 2023
A well plotted crime fiction thriller novel about Rae and Ingram who are nineteen days out of the Panama Canal, sailing slowly on the Pacific on the ‘Sarcen’ yacht, on their honeymoon. They unexpectedly find Hughie Warriner in his dinghy. He had abandoned his yacht, the Orpheus, stating that food poisoning had killed his wife and another couple. His boat had been slowly taking in too much water and was slowly sinking. Ingram, when Warriner is asleep, sails over to the stranded Orpheus. When he boards he finds three people on board, hungry for revenge against the man who attacked them and left them to drown.
This book was first published in 1963. It was made into a film starring Sam Neil and Nicole Kidman.
This book was first published in 1963. It was made into a film starring Sam Neil and Nicole Kidman.
March 29, 2024
Excellent nautical based thriller. Wish Orson Welles had finished his version (the Deep).
November 16, 2013
This really is a five-star book and I should probably rate it such. My one and only issue was the boat lingo, and I know absolutely nothing about boats, being a desert rat. 'Course, you figure it out as you go, and it took nothing away from the story, which was fantastic. Quite different from the movie, if you've ever seen it.
February 17, 2020
A very good thriller in the closed area of two boats with a fool. The nautical jargon didn't stopped my enthusiasm for the story. It was a page turner! I really "saw" the sea, felt the sun, the smelt of the decayed boat full of salt water.. And I was afraid all along. I enjoyed the terrible suspens. And I read the book in French - For me definitively a five stars book!
June 6, 2016
Survival at Sea
his reissue of a novel from 1963 caught me entirely by surprise. It was an impulse buy; I picked it up mistaking it for a mystery, as it says on the cover. But no, it is a genre I normally avoid: a psychological thriller. More than that, it is set entirely upon a small yacht—two yachts, actually—in the middle of the Pacific. If I tell you how much I hate the small-boat world after suffering under the captaincy of the tyrant who I once thought would be my father-in-law, it says a lot for the book that I stayed up into the small hours reading to the end. I literally could not put it down.
John Ingram and his wife Rae, both mature and previously married, are on their lazy way to Tahiti for their honeymoon, sailing the small ketch Saracen, when they spy a slightly larger boat in the distance. But as they are heading towards it, its owner, a young man named Hughie Warriner, rows out in a dinghy. He is in an hysterical panic and at the end of his tether. His wife and the other couple on board, he tells them, have died of botulism, and his ship, the Orpheus, is taking water faster than he can pump it out. He thanks them for saving his life, but refuses their offer to help remove his valuables from the boat. But Ingram rows over anyway. And discovers that not all of Warriner's story was true.
At this point, three chapters in, Warriner overpowers Rae and sails the Saracen away, leaving Ingram on the Orpheus. The ship is indeed sinking, and neither of the two people he finds on board is competent to sail her. From this point on, the story alternates between the two boats, often in the middle of a chapter with no visual break between paragraphs, a shift that gives a thrilling jolt each time. Although I am generally turned off by boat talk, it is a real pleasure to find a writer, Charles Williams—and a character, John Ingram—who are so much masters of their world that one is drawn in by their sheer competence. But I was more impressed yet by the fact that their ultimate survival does not depend solely upon seamanship, still less on physical violence, but upon John and Rae's ability to figure out the psychology of the three other people involved. We will eventually learn how the two couples on the Orpheus came to be together, and what happened to drive them apart. But the real mystery is the interplay of personalities under extreme conditions, and that kept me reading to the very end.
Probably only a three-star book, if I am honest, but it really did grab me by what's left of my hair and not let go. [There is also a 1989 movie of the same title, with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman, but from what I see in the synopsis, they changed the story extensively.]
his reissue of a novel from 1963 caught me entirely by surprise. It was an impulse buy; I picked it up mistaking it for a mystery, as it says on the cover. But no, it is a genre I normally avoid: a psychological thriller. More than that, it is set entirely upon a small yacht—two yachts, actually—in the middle of the Pacific. If I tell you how much I hate the small-boat world after suffering under the captaincy of the tyrant who I once thought would be my father-in-law, it says a lot for the book that I stayed up into the small hours reading to the end. I literally could not put it down.
John Ingram and his wife Rae, both mature and previously married, are on their lazy way to Tahiti for their honeymoon, sailing the small ketch Saracen, when they spy a slightly larger boat in the distance. But as they are heading towards it, its owner, a young man named Hughie Warriner, rows out in a dinghy. He is in an hysterical panic and at the end of his tether. His wife and the other couple on board, he tells them, have died of botulism, and his ship, the Orpheus, is taking water faster than he can pump it out. He thanks them for saving his life, but refuses their offer to help remove his valuables from the boat. But Ingram rows over anyway. And discovers that not all of Warriner's story was true.
At this point, three chapters in, Warriner overpowers Rae and sails the Saracen away, leaving Ingram on the Orpheus. The ship is indeed sinking, and neither of the two people he finds on board is competent to sail her. From this point on, the story alternates between the two boats, often in the middle of a chapter with no visual break between paragraphs, a shift that gives a thrilling jolt each time. Although I am generally turned off by boat talk, it is a real pleasure to find a writer, Charles Williams—and a character, John Ingram—who are so much masters of their world that one is drawn in by their sheer competence. But I was more impressed yet by the fact that their ultimate survival does not depend solely upon seamanship, still less on physical violence, but upon John and Rae's ability to figure out the psychology of the three other people involved. We will eventually learn how the two couples on the Orpheus came to be together, and what happened to drive them apart. But the real mystery is the interplay of personalities under extreme conditions, and that kept me reading to the very end.
Probably only a three-star book, if I am honest, but it really did grab me by what's left of my hair and not let go. [There is also a 1989 movie of the same title, with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman, but from what I see in the synopsis, they changed the story extensively.]
December 1, 2011
The inspiration for an interesting film starring Sam Neal and a young Nicole Kidman, this book came to me years after I'd seen the movie and I was fortunate enough not to make the connection until the climactic scene.
A brilliant book with only three characters and a cat and mouse survival feel that gives you shivers. What a shame this author died before his time. He was under appreciated in his day and I'm only sad he didn't live a few more decades and deliver more books with this much force and brilliantly drawn character.
A brilliant book with only three characters and a cat and mouse survival feel that gives you shivers. What a shame this author died before his time. He was under appreciated in his day and I'm only sad he didn't live a few more decades and deliver more books with this much force and brilliantly drawn character.
April 29, 2012
Ingram is an able bodied seaman with a mind that works well under pressure, but he made one mistake: he left his newly wed wife alone, on their sailboat, in the middle of the Pacific ocean, with a maniac!
Can you say "Whoops!"?
Just realized this a sequel to Aground, the book in which Rae and Ingram meet. Haven't read that one yet. This book has a great beginning (I thought it was going to be like Polanski's A knife in the Water, but it goes in a different direction) that it doesn't quite live up to, but still a solid suspense read.
Can you say "Whoops!"?
Just realized this a sequel to Aground, the book in which Rae and Ingram meet. Haven't read that one yet. This book has a great beginning (I thought it was going to be like Polanski's A knife in the Water, but it goes in a different direction) that it doesn't quite live up to, but still a solid suspense read.
March 24, 2020
Very suspenseful book. Solid writing, great characters, and an edge of your seat plot. My only complaint was that there were a number of places where scenes switched between characters with no spacing or no indication at all of the change. Each time I'd be reading along and suddenly realize I'm with a different set of characters a couple of paragraphs after the change. I doubt this was the fault of the writer. Probably a printer's glitch, but it was frustrating. Nothing could keep me from enjoying this story, though.
May 23, 2015
A book that has withstood the test of time. I enjoyed the story line and tension. The characters acted and reacted in real ways, my favourite being Ingram. This is the sequel to Aground. Ingram is not your average hero, he doesn't always win and that makes him human and believable. The film made of this book was changed in order to get shock value but they needn't have bothered, the book provides a really good yarn.
Read
July 22, 20243.5/5
+ : le rythme, le côté huis clos et l'angoisse que la situation crée.
- : les personnages.
+ : le rythme, le côté huis clos et l'angoisse que la situation crée.
- : les personnages.
May 17, 2020
I don't like saltwater, sailing, or sailboats. But that didn't keep me from being completely caught up in this classic tale of maritime suspense. Only the excess of 1962-style "cocktail psychiatry" kept me from giving in the full 5. Everything isn't mommy's fault!
Read
February 9, 2016Tension-filled opening dissolves into Grade B dialogue.
December 5, 2024
John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon, sailing across the Pacific towards Tahiti in their private ketch, Saracen. Stuck for days in dead calm, twelve hundred miles from land, they spy another craft, Orpheus, listing on the horizon. John Ingram, an experienced sailor, can tell by the sluggish way Orpheus rights itself in the rolling swell that she has taken on water. He fires up Saracen’s auxiliary engine and heads toward the other boat to see if anyone needs help.
Before he gets there, he encounters a young man rowing furiously toward him with all his strengh. When Hughie Warriner reaches the Saracen, Ingram and his wife pull the young man aboard. He appears to be in shock, as if fleeing some terror.
Ingram asks Hughie what happened as Rae does her best to calm the obviously rattled man. He tells them Orpheus set out from Mexico twenty-six days prior with four people aboard, also headed for Papeete in Tahiti. The other three passengers, Russell and Estelle Belew and Hughie’s wife Lillian, ate contaminated salmon from a can and died of botulism. Since their death, Orpheus took on enough water to submerge its engine and batteries. Trapped in the windless heat of the South Pacific, the boat could not move and was destined to sink.
Ingram tells Hughie he will board the Orpheus to collect the ship’s log and Hughie’s money and passport. He will need the latter to enter Tahiti. Hughie recoils in terror at the idea and urges Ingram not to board the ship. This makes Ingram suspicious, and when Hughie falls asleep from exhaustion, Ingram rows the dinghy to the other boat and goes aboard to have a look.
The water below deck is almost three feet deep, but the boat appears uninhabited, except for a small cabin in front whose door is bolted shut from the outside. Ingram goes in to find two passengers in distress. Hughie’s wife, Lillian, is naked and shaking in terror while the brutish Russell Belew is ready to smash Ingram’s skull in with a club. The only thing that stops him is Lillian calling out, “Stop! It’s not him.”
Ingram realizes that Hughie Warriner is a psychopath who has tried to murder his shipmates and then abandoned them on a boat that will sink before the next dawn. And he’s left this man alone on his own boat with his wife!
He gets in the dinghy and begins rowing back toward Saracen to warn Rae and to protect her. She sees him coming and fires up the engine to meet him halfway. The engine wakes Hughie, who comes on deck and sees that Ingram has unconvered his lie. The psychopath beats Rea unconscious, turns the boat around, and takes off full throttle, leaving Ingram and the other two to drown in the sinking Orpheus.
Now, how’s that for trouble?
Ingram watches helplessly as the madman disappears over the horizon with his injured wife. He has to come up with a plan to save Orpheus and hope that Rae’s resourcefulness will allow her to survive.
As dark as the story begins, it gets darker. With no engine and no wind, Orpheus can’t move. She begins to flood faster than the crew can pump. A passing storm damages the boat further. And as the infinitely resourceful and determined Rae comes up with plan after plan to wrest control of Saracen from the psychotic and overpowering Hughie Warriner, the psychopath thwarts them all.
“Conscious evil or malicious intent you could at least communicate with,” Rae reflects, “but Warriner was capable of destroying her with the pointlessness and the perfect innocence of a falling safe, and with its same imperviousness to argument.”
Dead Calm excels as both a suspense and action thriller. This may be the tensest book I’ve ever read. Both Rae and John Ingram are infinitely determined and resourceful against all odds. As Lillian Warriner watches Ingram in awe as he puts his final, last ditch plan into action, she thinks, “My God… they shouldn’t match him against just one ocean at a time.”
All of the characters are well drawn, and the action (there’s lots of it) rings true. The author spent ten years in the merchant marine and knows his way around a boat. He also knows how to navigate, which becomes a key and fascinating part of the story. In those days before GPS, a good mariner could find his way across thousands of miles of undifferentiated sea with just a compass, the sun and stars.
It makes you think of the thousands of years of hard-won knowledge our civilization gives up in exchange for modern technology’s easy answers. These skills, like so many others we’re turning over to computers and AI, will atrophy from lack of exercise, and in many areas, the generations that succeed us will have less knowledge than the generations that came before.
In addition to physical action, the book has a strong psychological component, as Rae intuitively probes the roots of Hughie’s psychosis, so she can find her way into his troubled mind.
It’s no wonder this one was a best seller when it came out in 1963. If you’re looking for a book that will keep you up all night, this is it.
Before he gets there, he encounters a young man rowing furiously toward him with all his strengh. When Hughie Warriner reaches the Saracen, Ingram and his wife pull the young man aboard. He appears to be in shock, as if fleeing some terror.
Ingram asks Hughie what happened as Rae does her best to calm the obviously rattled man. He tells them Orpheus set out from Mexico twenty-six days prior with four people aboard, also headed for Papeete in Tahiti. The other three passengers, Russell and Estelle Belew and Hughie’s wife Lillian, ate contaminated salmon from a can and died of botulism. Since their death, Orpheus took on enough water to submerge its engine and batteries. Trapped in the windless heat of the South Pacific, the boat could not move and was destined to sink.
Ingram tells Hughie he will board the Orpheus to collect the ship’s log and Hughie’s money and passport. He will need the latter to enter Tahiti. Hughie recoils in terror at the idea and urges Ingram not to board the ship. This makes Ingram suspicious, and when Hughie falls asleep from exhaustion, Ingram rows the dinghy to the other boat and goes aboard to have a look.
The water below deck is almost three feet deep, but the boat appears uninhabited, except for a small cabin in front whose door is bolted shut from the outside. Ingram goes in to find two passengers in distress. Hughie’s wife, Lillian, is naked and shaking in terror while the brutish Russell Belew is ready to smash Ingram’s skull in with a club. The only thing that stops him is Lillian calling out, “Stop! It’s not him.”
Ingram realizes that Hughie Warriner is a psychopath who has tried to murder his shipmates and then abandoned them on a boat that will sink before the next dawn. And he’s left this man alone on his own boat with his wife!
He gets in the dinghy and begins rowing back toward Saracen to warn Rae and to protect her. She sees him coming and fires up the engine to meet him halfway. The engine wakes Hughie, who comes on deck and sees that Ingram has unconvered his lie. The psychopath beats Rea unconscious, turns the boat around, and takes off full throttle, leaving Ingram and the other two to drown in the sinking Orpheus.
Now, how’s that for trouble?
Ingram watches helplessly as the madman disappears over the horizon with his injured wife. He has to come up with a plan to save Orpheus and hope that Rae’s resourcefulness will allow her to survive.
As dark as the story begins, it gets darker. With no engine and no wind, Orpheus can’t move. She begins to flood faster than the crew can pump. A passing storm damages the boat further. And as the infinitely resourceful and determined Rae comes up with plan after plan to wrest control of Saracen from the psychotic and overpowering Hughie Warriner, the psychopath thwarts them all.
“Conscious evil or malicious intent you could at least communicate with,” Rae reflects, “but Warriner was capable of destroying her with the pointlessness and the perfect innocence of a falling safe, and with its same imperviousness to argument.”
Dead Calm excels as both a suspense and action thriller. This may be the tensest book I’ve ever read. Both Rae and John Ingram are infinitely determined and resourceful against all odds. As Lillian Warriner watches Ingram in awe as he puts his final, last ditch plan into action, she thinks, “My God… they shouldn’t match him against just one ocean at a time.”
All of the characters are well drawn, and the action (there’s lots of it) rings true. The author spent ten years in the merchant marine and knows his way around a boat. He also knows how to navigate, which becomes a key and fascinating part of the story. In those days before GPS, a good mariner could find his way across thousands of miles of undifferentiated sea with just a compass, the sun and stars.
It makes you think of the thousands of years of hard-won knowledge our civilization gives up in exchange for modern technology’s easy answers. These skills, like so many others we’re turning over to computers and AI, will atrophy from lack of exercise, and in many areas, the generations that succeed us will have less knowledge than the generations that came before.
In addition to physical action, the book has a strong psychological component, as Rae intuitively probes the roots of Hughie’s psychosis, so she can find her way into his troubled mind.
It’s no wonder this one was a best seller when it came out in 1963. If you’re looking for a book that will keep you up all night, this is it.
June 22, 2024
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5
Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub…
John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon, cruising casually on their yacht through the Indian Ocean when they encounter a young man, Hughie Warriner, along in a small boat. Hughie claims to have come from another boat where the other three passengers succumbed to food poisoning, and with them incapacitated, the ship sank with them aboard, with Hughie only barely managing to escape in the dinghy.
John, a former Naval officer, senses too many inconsistencies in Hughie’s story and heads off in the direction that the young man had come from. He finds the listing boat and when Hughie is asleep below deck, John takes a small boat over to investigate. What he finds is an unhappy Russ Bellows and Mrs. Warriner, begging for help. Hughie, it seems, caused the death of Bellows’ wife and has gone off the deep end (pun acknowledged).
While John was investigating, Hughie takes the Ingram yacht, with Rae still aboard, and leaves John with the abandoned boat. John will pursue the kidnapper and his new wife in any way he can.
I was not familiar with author Charles Williams prior to this, and I see now that this is a follow-up to another book with John and Rae Ingram – though this definitely stands alone.
I thought it was really interesting to set the entire novel aboard a small boat on an ocean. It really contributed to a strong sense of claustrophobia which greatly added to the psychological unease.
There wasn’t really any ‘terror’ here, but when you are stuck in cramped quarters with someone you find suspicious, perhaps even a murderer, the constant emotional strain really wears a person down. Williams really captures this sense well, but manages to change it up when Hughie takes off with the boat and Rae. We then get the chase and a new sense of danger for Rae as she’s now alone on the boat, nowhere to escape, with the man who’s left her husband for dead.
I quite enjoyed the book. I liked the challenge of containing the action to such small spaces, really forcing this to be a story of people and their actions. But though I liked it, I can’t honestly say that it’s made me want to seek out more of Williams’ writing.
Looking for a good book? Dead Calm by Charles Williams is a hard-boiled fiction story, well contained with a limited cast of characters that will keep you wondering who’s trustworthy, who isn’t, and what’s going to happen next.
I received a digital copy of this book in the collection Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964, from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub…
John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon, cruising casually on their yacht through the Indian Ocean when they encounter a young man, Hughie Warriner, along in a small boat. Hughie claims to have come from another boat where the other three passengers succumbed to food poisoning, and with them incapacitated, the ship sank with them aboard, with Hughie only barely managing to escape in the dinghy.
John, a former Naval officer, senses too many inconsistencies in Hughie’s story and heads off in the direction that the young man had come from. He finds the listing boat and when Hughie is asleep below deck, John takes a small boat over to investigate. What he finds is an unhappy Russ Bellows and Mrs. Warriner, begging for help. Hughie, it seems, caused the death of Bellows’ wife and has gone off the deep end (pun acknowledged).
While John was investigating, Hughie takes the Ingram yacht, with Rae still aboard, and leaves John with the abandoned boat. John will pursue the kidnapper and his new wife in any way he can.
I was not familiar with author Charles Williams prior to this, and I see now that this is a follow-up to another book with John and Rae Ingram – though this definitely stands alone.
I thought it was really interesting to set the entire novel aboard a small boat on an ocean. It really contributed to a strong sense of claustrophobia which greatly added to the psychological unease.
There wasn’t really any ‘terror’ here, but when you are stuck in cramped quarters with someone you find suspicious, perhaps even a murderer, the constant emotional strain really wears a person down. Williams really captures this sense well, but manages to change it up when Hughie takes off with the boat and Rae. We then get the chase and a new sense of danger for Rae as she’s now alone on the boat, nowhere to escape, with the man who’s left her husband for dead.
I quite enjoyed the book. I liked the challenge of containing the action to such small spaces, really forcing this to be a story of people and their actions. But though I liked it, I can’t honestly say that it’s made me want to seek out more of Williams’ writing.
Looking for a good book? Dead Calm by Charles Williams is a hard-boiled fiction story, well contained with a limited cast of characters that will keep you wondering who’s trustworthy, who isn’t, and what’s going to happen next.
I received a digital copy of this book in the collection Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964, from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
January 14, 2025
I was reminded of the film adaptation of this when Turner Classic Movies had it on a few months ago. I knew about the story beforehand, from the famous attempts of Orson Welles to make this, with Lawrence Harvey presumably as Ingram (I think he would have been a bit too old for Warriner), and Welles himself as Bellews. I wish that version had been made--love a good Welles movie--but I've heard many good things about the newer version--starring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane--though I've yet to see it: that's to come shortly.
Meanwhile, the book, which this site is about, not films. It's a tense ride, helped by how short it is, but it didn't manage to capture me fully. I don't know if it's I don't like sailing stories or did the normal American Library printing of the book that I don't like. I may have to re-read this in one sitting in a paperback form. I don't know. It's good, don't get me wrong, worth the read.
My rating: 4/5
Would I own/re-read?: I want to give it a second crack at some point.
TW: Death, Blood, Mental Illness, Bodily Fluids (Vomit), Death, Kidnapping, Hostage Situation, Men Being Assholes
Does the animal die?: A shark gets punched in the nose. It remains fine. Though one of the people in the water does not. There's also references to fishing.
Meanwhile, the book, which this site is about, not films. It's a tense ride, helped by how short it is, but it didn't manage to capture me fully. I don't know if it's I don't like sailing stories or did the normal American Library printing of the book that I don't like. I may have to re-read this in one sitting in a paperback form. I don't know. It's good, don't get me wrong, worth the read.
My rating: 4/5
Would I own/re-read?: I want to give it a second crack at some point.
TW: Death, Blood, Mental Illness, Bodily Fluids (Vomit), Death, Kidnapping, Hostage Situation, Men Being Assholes
Does the animal die?: A shark gets punched in the nose. It remains fine. Though one of the people in the water does not. There's also references to fishing.
May 3, 2021
How about this twist...the book isn't as good as the movie. (smile)
Dead Calm, the movie, has a star-studded cast (as they say in Hollywood) including Nicole Kidman, Sam Neil, and Billy Zane as the sea-faring maniac. They're all outstanding, and overall Dead Calm, the movie, is a very good combination of action and drama.
The book falls short. The author does a good job of describing the immensity of the ocean, but in a lot of other areas, the writing style isn't great. The plot is there, but all the sailing details are tedious. The inner monologue of the characters is surprisingly tedious as well. Where the movie is dense and action-packed, the book feels slow.
QOTD
It’s all right, he told himself. It’s all right. There’s no reason the crazy son of a bitch would wake up. Then, across a hundred and fifty yards of open water, he heard the growl of the starter. Rae was coming to pick him up.
+ John Ingram (Sam Neil), Dead Calm
Not a good read. thanks...yow, bill
PS - It's a better watch if you can find the movie, which was released in 1989, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dead...
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