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The Dazzle
Scarborough, 1934. John Fastolf, rakish heir to a Dukedom, has sponsored a glamorous tunny fishing contest. He has his reasons.
The young journalist Martha Gellhorn is covering the event for the London gossip papers. She has hers.
And quiet little Henny Rosefield has arrived in town with Zane Grey, bestselling author and expert mountain man of the Wild West.
The international craze for hunting giant tuna has swept the North Yorkshire coast, and huge yachts have transformed the harbour into something like Monte Carlo. Over them all towers the Dazzle, resplendent in jagged stripes of black, white and blue. She looks like a junior sort of ocean liner but she's a very adult sort of yacht.
In the harbour, damaged dilettantes will swap beds and swap lies. Far offshore, on the rips and tides of the malevolent North Sea, gallant battle will be done. All the while, something truly dangerous is lurking. But we can't see any of that. Just the Dazzle sitting on the edge of the world, shimmering as the sea glitters, her outline wavering.
Wrapped in a gripping adventure story, Robert Hudson’s second novel is a deliciously witty tale of wilderness, vengeance and the death of love.
The young journalist Martha Gellhorn is covering the event for the London gossip papers. She has hers.
And quiet little Henny Rosefield has arrived in town with Zane Grey, bestselling author and expert mountain man of the Wild West.
The international craze for hunting giant tuna has swept the North Yorkshire coast, and huge yachts have transformed the harbour into something like Monte Carlo. Over them all towers the Dazzle, resplendent in jagged stripes of black, white and blue. She looks like a junior sort of ocean liner but she's a very adult sort of yacht.
In the harbour, damaged dilettantes will swap beds and swap lies. Far offshore, on the rips and tides of the malevolent North Sea, gallant battle will be done. All the while, something truly dangerous is lurking. But we can't see any of that. Just the Dazzle sitting on the edge of the world, shimmering as the sea glitters, her outline wavering.
Wrapped in a gripping adventure story, Robert Hudson’s second novel is a deliciously witty tale of wilderness, vengeance and the death of love.
324 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 31, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 26, 2023
I really wanted to like this book as the cover is so magnificent. But I didn’t. There are some excellent comedic sections but I think my issue was there were too many characters with complicated names and I couldn’t keep track of who was who. I could have done with the historical note at the start as I feel I really didn’t appreciate the effort that had gone in to researching this book until the end.
The acknowledgments and other notes show how humorous the writer is e.g.
“On the whole, I do not thank the crew of the boat that took me out tuna fishing. They shot a seal in the face”
The acknowledgments and other notes show how humorous the writer is e.g.
“On the whole, I do not thank the crew of the boat that took me out tuna fishing. They shot a seal in the face”
December 23, 2022
I'm not generally a fan of novels told through letters as a lot of this was, and 70 pages in I still didn't get what the point of this story was, or why I was meant to care for any of the characters. It was too much of an ensemble cast and merely being set in a glamorous setting didn't make it interesting.
March 31, 2015
There is a story here, about people one can't connect or sympathise with in any way. But Hudson is trying too hard for cleverness for it to be engaging.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews