Slapton Sands

by Francis Cottam

The long, hot summer of 1976 and American student Alice Bourne is heading for the south Devon coast to research an event that took place 32 years a catastrophe which claimed the lives of 1,500 American marines. No one seems to know exactly what happened that fateful day in April, 1944. But as Alice learns more about the farm boys from Iowa and Nebraska who came to an alien land prepared to battle against Nazism, she determines that the true story of their sacrifice should finally be told. Herself a stranger in a strange land, Alice is only just becoming used to the English and their peculiar ways. But someone is making her increasingly unwelcome. Minor disturbing incidents escalate until Alice believes she's being haunted; targeted by a malevolent individual with his own dark reasons for preventing her from finding out what really happened at Slapton Sands. A poignant love story and a chilling tale of suspense, this beautifully-crafted novel gradually peels back the layers of past and present to reveal the harrowing truth about a tragic wartime event and its devastating repercussions.

Genres: Historical

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2005

About the author

Francis or F.G. Cottam was born and brought up in Southport in Lancashire, attending the University of Kent at Canterbury where he took a degree in history before embarking on a career in journalism in London. He lived for 20 years in North Lambeth and during the 1990s was prominent in the lad-mag revolution, launch editing FHM, inventing Total Sport magazine and then launching the UK edition of Men’s Health. He is the father of a young son and baby daughter and now lives in Kingston upon Thames. His fiction is thought up over daily runs along the towpath between Kingston and Hampton Court Bridges.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this when I started reading it. Bit of mystery, history etc. The further I read the more disappointed I became. Very fanciful indeed and the ending really flopped.
Oh well

[Meryl Wilkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the second reading of this book after a period of a number of years.
Second time around I picked up a lot of detail and information that I missed or couldn’t remember in the first reading. I have always wondered what happened at Slapton Sands and this book gave me a good understanding of what happened.
I sometimes found Cottam’s vision of England in the heat of the 1976 summer quite harsh! Of course, it is written through the eyes of Alice, an American girl studying in England with a view to finding out the mystery behind Slapton for herself.
On the whole, I enjoyed this book, even though it left me sad to think of the Americans who shouldn’t have died that way and the villagers forced to leave their homes.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing. Engaging plot.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slapton Sands is something of a bridge between the author's supernatural tales and his historical fiction; it's one part WWII history lesson, one part romance and one part ghost story. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given my own preferences, I didn't enjoy this as much as the likes of my all-time favourite Dark Echo, but it was much more to my taste than A Shadow On the Sun. The historical element, regarding the 1944 evacuation of the Slapton area of Devon in order to train American soldiers for the invasion of Normandy, was interesting - and actually educational, as I wasn't aware of the story behind Exercise Tiger prior to reading this book. Alice and David's relationship was sweetly depicted and I did come to like the characters, although I felt Alice's attitude towards the English was a bit offensive at times - would an American student in the 70s, having chosen to study in the UK, really have been so judgemental? By far the strongest element of the plot was the suspense-filled 'haunting' of Alice by the spirit of Johnny Compton, which created a wonderfully foreboding atmosphere, particularly after Alice's gripping meetings with the mysterious Rachel Vine and Rory Carnegie. Having read the author's other ghost stories, I expected this plotline to have a much more dramatic climax, and was rather disappointed that the ending was so subtle.

Overall, the book was definitely above average - a 3.5 rather than a 3 (I would have given it 4, but I think I'm being stingy because I've read so many good books recently and as much as I liked this, I can't put it on the same level as something like PopCo). Cottam is excellent at creating tension and writing believably about spooky, inexplicable incidents and ghostly presences; I just wish there had been more of these and less about Alice and David's burgeoning romance.

[Lorna · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of these books that might have been ok and was but not interesting enough to write about. Based on a real happening in 2nd WW I think but the main characters left a lot to be desired and it was abour ghosts. Not my thing.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read, and loved, the novels of F.G. Cottam, I decided to read the books he wrote as Francis Cottam. I liked "Slapton Sands". Unlike the more recent books the supernatural element is vague, but it is still a pretty decent read.