The Devil at 4 O'Clock

by Max Catto

Popular Special No. SP99

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Maxwell Jeffrey Catto (29 July 1907 – 12 March 1992) was born Mark Finkell in Manchester, England and was an English playwright and novelist. Catto wrote adventure novels and dramas for more than four decades and also wrote under the pseudonym Simon Kent.
Ten of his works were adapted for film, the most notable of which was the novel The Killing Frost, which became Carol Reed's 1956 film Trapeze. Although he was a holder of a degree in electrical engineering from Manchester University, Catto began writing novels and plays in the late 1930s. After a stint in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Catto returned to writing fiction. Exotic settings and fast-paced action were the trademarks of his novels, defying categorization into any one genre, instead blending elements of many popular literary styles. Much of his work has been translated into other languages.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess some folks found this book shallow and formulaic (before the disaster genre was really a thing). This was among a handful of books bequeathed to me by my long-departed mother. They've been languishing in my bookcase for decades. Caught in a detritus-thinning-mood, I figured I should at least read these books before tossing them to charity or wherever they may go. I'm glad I did.

I found this narrative engaging and the characters multi-dimensional. No one was who they appeared to be on the outside. Stripped to their basic humanity, they showed courage, bravery, wit, and intelligence that I would be proud of, where it mine. It being a disaster film that pits an overly optimistic but earthy preacher, three convicted criminals, a passel of native island leprous children, and their matron, against the rumbling protests of a volcano which will soon subsume the entire Pacific island, after the early introductory chapters, the pace of the story ramps up.

For me, there were vague memories and visions of the 1961 film by the same name, which starred Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra, and which I had seen as a child of about ten. Images of the mountain exploding, lava flowing, mud pots sucking stuck with me, even though details didn't. As a child I certainly missed the nuances of surface-level Christianity vs. Christianity in action, of labeling and othering various classes of human beings, of the power of hope, tenacity, and sheer determination.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes much of 1950s and 1960s adventure fiction interesting is that it goes beyond its own genre conventions and settings. Without harping on moralistic tedium, it has at its core serious questions and perhaps even larger frustrations with those questions. Because the answers it supplies often seem hopeless. That is the sort of stance Max Catto takes with Devil. Ostensibly, it's a simple adventure story: a priest accompanied by three convicts parachute into the remote hillside of a volcano in French Polynesia. The mountain is about to blow, but the four men make their way to an isolated hospital for lepers, in order to lead them to safety and evacuation.

I'll not spend time on the religious allegory. Even from what I've described, that should be clear--at least to people of a certain age. And even Catto doesn't take chances. His audience would have been attuned to the allegorical structure of the story, but the author nonetheless makes it all but clear in a line of dialog he offers a few pages before the end. That dialog, however, might well be beyond most contemporary readers. That is the point that interests me. For Catto was dealing in the 1950s with the issue of a cohesive culture. Coming out of World War II and into the Atomic Age, however, the culture was beginning to splinter. Its assumptions began to fail. How to restore and redeem? Ultimately, the novel answers those questions. Still, the ending leaves open that restoration just might be beyond hope. Not even individual and group sacrifice is enough. What then?

The novel provided the material for a movie of the same name in 1961. I've probably watched it ten or twelve times. Spencer Tracy is the priest and Frank Sinatra portrays one of the convicts. The movie hews very closely to the novel, with the exception that the novel breaks up its perspective of events. Three people describe their interaction with the priest and his condemned men, instead of one omniscient eye. The last moments before the blast, too, do not appear in the book as they do in the film.

[Luis Garcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decepcionante. Aburrido. Un argumento interesante mal desarrollado. La película es más atractiva que el libro

[Beauregard Shagnasty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent adventure novel, very well-written.