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John Ingram #1
Aground
A classy blond, a beautiful yacht, an island in the Bahamas -- every man's dream. But for Ingram it's a nightmare.
It starts when he agrees to help find Dragoon, a vanished schooner. The money isn't much -- but the statuesque blond who hires him is!
Now it looks like he's going to get deep-sixed. Run hard aground, pinned down by rifle fire and sitting on top of a bilge full of gasoline, something's going to blow!
It starts when he agrees to help find Dragoon, a vanished schooner. The money isn't much -- but the statuesque blond who hires him is!
Now it looks like he's going to get deep-sixed. Run hard aground, pinned down by rifle fire and sitting on top of a bilge full of gasoline, something's going to blow!
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
4 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Charles Williams
33 books100 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 16, 2019
My next appointment with hard-boiled fiction maestro Charles Williams is Aground. Published in 1960, this nautical crime thriller introduced Captain John Ingram and Rae Ingram (née Osborne). The characters would appear in a sequel titled Dead Calm memorably adapted to an Australian film in 1989 with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman in the roles. While other authors might write maritime material expertly well but struggle with characters, or craft compelling characters but not know port from starboard, Williams offers both with this exciting story of a man who draws on his knowledge of the sea to stay alive against men capable of arranging a burial for him in it.
The story takes off in present day Miami, where John Ingram limps from a plane and checks into a fleabag hotel he recently checked out of, hopping between Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Florida on business, possibly the unsavory sort given the two police detectives who knock on his door. Ingram reveals that he's in the boat-repair business, having operated a boatyard in San Juan until his partner was killed in the fire that scarred Ingram's left leg. He affirms that he was in Key West to buy a boat and inspected the schooner Dragoon. The detectives inform Ingram that someone has stolen the fifty-thousand dollar yacht he was just aboard.
Ingram admits that he was hired to buy a boat for a client named Fredric Hollister, president of Hollister-Dykes Laboratories, and report back to him at his Miami hotel. When the detectives determine that Hollister checked out a week ago, they bring Ingram in for questioning. He proves his innocence through receipts, as well as an offer letter received by the owner of the Dragoon, Mrs. C.R. Osborne of Houston. While the yacht has disappeared, the dinghy has been recovered, with a watch belonging to Ingram's client and some clothes, but no "Hollister." Released from custody, Ingram receives a message from Mrs. Osborne, who's flown to Miami and wants to meet.
it was less than ten minutes later when he stepped out of the elevator at the Columbus and strode down the carpeted and air-conditioned quietness of the corridor looking at the numbers. When he knocked, she answered almost immediately, and for a second he thought he must have the wrong room. Even hearing her voice over the telephone hadn't entirely prepared him for this.
Somehow, a woman who owned a seventy-foot yacht in her own name figured to be a greying and wealthy widow on the far side of fifty, at least, but this statuesque blonde with the flamboyant mop of hair couldn't be much over thirty. She wore a green knit dress that did her figure no harm at all, and he had a quick impression of a well-tended and slightly arrogant face with a bright red mouth, high cheekbones, sea-green eyes, and a good tan. "Come in, Captain," she said. "I'm Rae Osborne."
He stepped inside. The room was the sitting room of a suite, furnished with a pearl-grey sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table. At the far end was a window with flamingo drapes. The door into the bedroom was on the left. There was a soft light from the lamps at either end of the sofa. The thing that caught his eye, however, was the chart spread out on the coffee table. He stepped nearer, and saw it was the Coast & Geodetic Survey No. 1002, a general chart of the Florida Straits, Cuba, and the Bahamas. A highball glass stood in the center of it, in a spreading ring of moisture. He winced.
Having checked him out to verify he's an experienced yachtsman, Mrs. Osborne wants Ingram to help her find the Dragoon. He attempts to talk her out of it. The search area is around eight-thousand square miles, which consists of thousands of miles of uncharted shoals, reefs, coral heads and sand bars. If they do locate the boat, they can hardly call a cop to arrest the thieves. For her own reasons, Mrs. Osborne is serious about finding Hollister, while Ingram is intrigued what the thieves intend to do with a stolen yacht they can't sell or enter any western port aboard.
Hiring a pilot to conduct their search by air, Ingram and Mrs. Osborne locate the Dragoon run aground on a sand bar. It appears to have been abandoned. Returning the next morning when the tide allows the plane to land, Ingram and Mrs. Osborne note that someone has made a sloppy attempt to repaint and rename the yacht. Ingram goes down into the after cabin and discovers it filled with long wooden cases. He's ambushed by two armed men: a big, thirty-year-old son of a bitch named Al Morrison who radiates violence and gives orders to his partner, a Latin in his forties named Carlos Ruiz.
Ingram is forced to radiotelephone their pilot to take off, that he and Mrs. Osborne are staying to get the yacht loose from the sand. Morrison drafts Ingram into helping do just that, burdened by six to eight tons of guns and ammo bound for Central America. Morrison states that the man who Ingram knew as "Hollister" but Mrs. Osborne knows as her first husband, Patrick Ives, set up the deal and served as navigator, but drowned. Once Mrs. Osbourne starts dipping into the rum, Ingram seems on his own to figure a way out. Worked all day and left on the sandbar by the mercenaries at night, Ingram camps with Mrs. Osbourne, who reveals she's very sober and has a plan to separate Ruiz from his .45.
She took a puff on her cigarette; the tip glowed, revealing for an instant the handsome face with its prodigious shiner. There was something undeniably raffish about it, and appealing, and as attractive as sin. Must be atavistic, he thought; the view just before the clinch, after a Stone Age courtship.
"What are you driving at?" he asked.
"I don't want Ruiz to figure out I might have fooled him. He has a great deal of contempt for me, and I want to keep it alive."
"Why?"
"I think our only chance is one of us to surprise him while Morrison's over here on the sand bar, and you're never going to get behind him if you live to be a hundred. I watched him all day, and that boy's cool."
"Also too tough to be knocked off his feet by a woman," Ingram said. "If he looks easy, it's just because you're seeing him alongside Morrison."
"It wouldn't have to be for more than three or four seconds, if we timed it right. However, we'll table that for the moment and get back to Patrick Ives. It doesn't add up. He was aboard. They say he drowned."
"Are you sure he was aboard?" Ingram asked quietly.
The story of a stolen yacht and the two attractive people who go after and then get trapped on it doesn't move the needle in terms of excitement. What makes Aground special is that Charles Williams likes people and knows how to write them as well as he does boats or bodies of water. Ingram is introduced as if he might be a bad guy, which I found interesting. His background and his fears are woven into the plot supremely well. The same goes for Rae, who's resourceful and independent in a way women weren't often shown to be in this era of publishing. Williams' craftsmanship sped me through the story, hoping that the couple would make it out and get together.
They slid aft until they were beside the cleat holding the tackle, and sat down on the sloping deck with their backs against the deckhouse in the velvet night overlaid with the shining dust of stars. There was no sound anywhere, and they seemed to be caught up and suspended in some vast and cosmic hush outside of time and lost in space. They sat shoulder to shoulder, unspeaking, with Ingram's left hand resting lightly on the taut and motionless nylon leading aft, and when he put the other hand down on deck it was on hers and she turned hers slightly so they met and clasped together. After a long time she stirred and said in a small voice, "This is a great conversation, isn't it? I hope I didn't promise anything brilliant." He turned and looked at the soft gleam of tawny hair and the pale shape of her face in the starlight and then she was in his arms and he was holding her hungrily and almost roughly as he kissed her. There was a wild and wonderful sweetness about it with her arms tight around his neck and the strange, miraculous breaching of the walls of loneliness behind which he had lived so long, and then she was pushing back with her hands against his shoulders.
One reason that so much of Williams's work has been adapted to film--a number of them French language productions in the 1960s--is how visual his writing is: a couple, a sand bar, a shipwreck, two mercenaries, an arms shipment. Williams knows his milieu extremely well and uses it to inform character. I liked how perturbed Ingram is when introduced to Rae and sees a glass ring forming on a nautical chart from a glass she's left there. No detail goes wasted. Ingram's fear of gasoline leaks or fire at sea is detailed terrifically but also put into service when the Dragoon is threatened by the same peril. My basic seamanship course with this author will continue.
The story takes off in present day Miami, where John Ingram limps from a plane and checks into a fleabag hotel he recently checked out of, hopping between Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Florida on business, possibly the unsavory sort given the two police detectives who knock on his door. Ingram reveals that he's in the boat-repair business, having operated a boatyard in San Juan until his partner was killed in the fire that scarred Ingram's left leg. He affirms that he was in Key West to buy a boat and inspected the schooner Dragoon. The detectives inform Ingram that someone has stolen the fifty-thousand dollar yacht he was just aboard.
Ingram admits that he was hired to buy a boat for a client named Fredric Hollister, president of Hollister-Dykes Laboratories, and report back to him at his Miami hotel. When the detectives determine that Hollister checked out a week ago, they bring Ingram in for questioning. He proves his innocence through receipts, as well as an offer letter received by the owner of the Dragoon, Mrs. C.R. Osborne of Houston. While the yacht has disappeared, the dinghy has been recovered, with a watch belonging to Ingram's client and some clothes, but no "Hollister." Released from custody, Ingram receives a message from Mrs. Osborne, who's flown to Miami and wants to meet.
it was less than ten minutes later when he stepped out of the elevator at the Columbus and strode down the carpeted and air-conditioned quietness of the corridor looking at the numbers. When he knocked, she answered almost immediately, and for a second he thought he must have the wrong room. Even hearing her voice over the telephone hadn't entirely prepared him for this.
Somehow, a woman who owned a seventy-foot yacht in her own name figured to be a greying and wealthy widow on the far side of fifty, at least, but this statuesque blonde with the flamboyant mop of hair couldn't be much over thirty. She wore a green knit dress that did her figure no harm at all, and he had a quick impression of a well-tended and slightly arrogant face with a bright red mouth, high cheekbones, sea-green eyes, and a good tan. "Come in, Captain," she said. "I'm Rae Osborne."
He stepped inside. The room was the sitting room of a suite, furnished with a pearl-grey sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table. At the far end was a window with flamingo drapes. The door into the bedroom was on the left. There was a soft light from the lamps at either end of the sofa. The thing that caught his eye, however, was the chart spread out on the coffee table. He stepped nearer, and saw it was the Coast & Geodetic Survey No. 1002, a general chart of the Florida Straits, Cuba, and the Bahamas. A highball glass stood in the center of it, in a spreading ring of moisture. He winced.
Having checked him out to verify he's an experienced yachtsman, Mrs. Osborne wants Ingram to help her find the Dragoon. He attempts to talk her out of it. The search area is around eight-thousand square miles, which consists of thousands of miles of uncharted shoals, reefs, coral heads and sand bars. If they do locate the boat, they can hardly call a cop to arrest the thieves. For her own reasons, Mrs. Osborne is serious about finding Hollister, while Ingram is intrigued what the thieves intend to do with a stolen yacht they can't sell or enter any western port aboard.
Hiring a pilot to conduct their search by air, Ingram and Mrs. Osborne locate the Dragoon run aground on a sand bar. It appears to have been abandoned. Returning the next morning when the tide allows the plane to land, Ingram and Mrs. Osborne note that someone has made a sloppy attempt to repaint and rename the yacht. Ingram goes down into the after cabin and discovers it filled with long wooden cases. He's ambushed by two armed men: a big, thirty-year-old son of a bitch named Al Morrison who radiates violence and gives orders to his partner, a Latin in his forties named Carlos Ruiz.
Ingram is forced to radiotelephone their pilot to take off, that he and Mrs. Osborne are staying to get the yacht loose from the sand. Morrison drafts Ingram into helping do just that, burdened by six to eight tons of guns and ammo bound for Central America. Morrison states that the man who Ingram knew as "Hollister" but Mrs. Osborne knows as her first husband, Patrick Ives, set up the deal and served as navigator, but drowned. Once Mrs. Osbourne starts dipping into the rum, Ingram seems on his own to figure a way out. Worked all day and left on the sandbar by the mercenaries at night, Ingram camps with Mrs. Osbourne, who reveals she's very sober and has a plan to separate Ruiz from his .45.
She took a puff on her cigarette; the tip glowed, revealing for an instant the handsome face with its prodigious shiner. There was something undeniably raffish about it, and appealing, and as attractive as sin. Must be atavistic, he thought; the view just before the clinch, after a Stone Age courtship.
"What are you driving at?" he asked.
"I don't want Ruiz to figure out I might have fooled him. He has a great deal of contempt for me, and I want to keep it alive."
"Why?"
"I think our only chance is one of us to surprise him while Morrison's over here on the sand bar, and you're never going to get behind him if you live to be a hundred. I watched him all day, and that boy's cool."
"Also too tough to be knocked off his feet by a woman," Ingram said. "If he looks easy, it's just because you're seeing him alongside Morrison."
"It wouldn't have to be for more than three or four seconds, if we timed it right. However, we'll table that for the moment and get back to Patrick Ives. It doesn't add up. He was aboard. They say he drowned."
"Are you sure he was aboard?" Ingram asked quietly.
The story of a stolen yacht and the two attractive people who go after and then get trapped on it doesn't move the needle in terms of excitement. What makes Aground special is that Charles Williams likes people and knows how to write them as well as he does boats or bodies of water. Ingram is introduced as if he might be a bad guy, which I found interesting. His background and his fears are woven into the plot supremely well. The same goes for Rae, who's resourceful and independent in a way women weren't often shown to be in this era of publishing. Williams' craftsmanship sped me through the story, hoping that the couple would make it out and get together.
They slid aft until they were beside the cleat holding the tackle, and sat down on the sloping deck with their backs against the deckhouse in the velvet night overlaid with the shining dust of stars. There was no sound anywhere, and they seemed to be caught up and suspended in some vast and cosmic hush outside of time and lost in space. They sat shoulder to shoulder, unspeaking, with Ingram's left hand resting lightly on the taut and motionless nylon leading aft, and when he put the other hand down on deck it was on hers and she turned hers slightly so they met and clasped together. After a long time she stirred and said in a small voice, "This is a great conversation, isn't it? I hope I didn't promise anything brilliant." He turned and looked at the soft gleam of tawny hair and the pale shape of her face in the starlight and then she was in his arms and he was holding her hungrily and almost roughly as he kissed her. There was a wild and wonderful sweetness about it with her arms tight around his neck and the strange, miraculous breaching of the walls of loneliness behind which he had lived so long, and then she was pushing back with her hands against his shoulders.
One reason that so much of Williams's work has been adapted to film--a number of them French language productions in the 1960s--is how visual his writing is: a couple, a sand bar, a shipwreck, two mercenaries, an arms shipment. Williams knows his milieu extremely well and uses it to inform character. I liked how perturbed Ingram is when introduced to Rae and sees a glass ring forming on a nautical chart from a glass she's left there. No detail goes wasted. Ingram's fear of gasoline leaks or fire at sea is detailed terrifically but also put into service when the Dragoon is threatened by the same peril. My basic seamanship course with this author will continue.
August 4, 2023
Aground is another terrific nautical thriller from Charles Williams. John Ingram (the hero of Dead Calm) is a tortured and aging sailor who is recovering from the death of his friend and business associate in an explosion on their boat. Ingram is hired by a seemingly rich businessman to check out a schooner called the Dragoon that is up for sale. But when the businessman (who is revealed to be a fake) goes missing and the schooner is stolen, Ingram and a beautiful hard drinking widow (who is the real owner) fly to the Bahamas to locate the stolen vessel. After they locate the abandoned schooner, they find themselves fighting off a a couple of dangerous gun runners who had stolen the schooner and now want Ingram to take them to Cuba. The parts where Ingram and the widow are on board the schooner, trying to stave off a gun runner who is shooting at the schooner from an island is superbly written - filled with a lot of detail and interesting situations that offer scope for a lot of entertaining action.
Like in The Sailcloth Shroud, the main character John Ingram is unwittingly taken in for questioning by the police for a crime which he did not commit, right at the beginning of the novel. Ingram soon becomes embroiled in a mystery that offers a possibility of redemption from the biggest tragedy of his life. Ingram is an ageing sailor with a limp but he also has many wonderful memories (mostly connected to sailing) that he can look back at.
It is a terrific little book (only 144 pages long) filled with great action, amazing locations and beautiful descriptions of the ocean, its tides, its vagaries and also about sailing ..... described in intricate detail that often went over my head. But I soldiered on despite not understanding all of it because like Williams I love the ocean. But unlike Williams, I can only vicariously enjoy the adventures of sailors and their beautiful women through his novels. This is the kind of book on which a $50 million movie should be made. It is a shame that a lot of Charles Williams novels are out of print and hard to buy. Even the second hand copies are too expensive. All I can do is gaze longingly at the beautiful covers on the internet hoping that prices would come down one day and make them affordable to me. Williams is that rare great writer of crime fiction in a genre that is filled with mediocrities. There are only a few like him. You have to mine through a lot of shit before discovering such gold.
Like in The Sailcloth Shroud, the main character John Ingram is unwittingly taken in for questioning by the police for a crime which he did not commit, right at the beginning of the novel. Ingram soon becomes embroiled in a mystery that offers a possibility of redemption from the biggest tragedy of his life. Ingram is an ageing sailor with a limp but he also has many wonderful memories (mostly connected to sailing) that he can look back at.
It is a terrific little book (only 144 pages long) filled with great action, amazing locations and beautiful descriptions of the ocean, its tides, its vagaries and also about sailing ..... described in intricate detail that often went over my head. But I soldiered on despite not understanding all of it because like Williams I love the ocean. But unlike Williams, I can only vicariously enjoy the adventures of sailors and their beautiful women through his novels. This is the kind of book on which a $50 million movie should be made. It is a shame that a lot of Charles Williams novels are out of print and hard to buy. Even the second hand copies are too expensive. All I can do is gaze longingly at the beautiful covers on the internet hoping that prices would come down one day and make them affordable to me. Williams is that rare great writer of crime fiction in a genre that is filled with mediocrities. There are only a few like him. You have to mine through a lot of shit before discovering such gold.
May 15, 2023
01/2021
From 1960
The first book I read by Williams was the absolutely amazing Dead Calm (1963) and, not long ago, I discovered that it's a sequel to this book, Aground. I was so excited to read this and I was not disappointed. It moves so fast, so much suspense and danger. I loved it. Dead Calm was better though.
From 1960
The first book I read by Williams was the absolutely amazing Dead Calm (1963) and, not long ago, I discovered that it's a sequel to this book, Aground. I was so excited to read this and I was not disappointed. It moves so fast, so much suspense and danger. I loved it. Dead Calm was better though.
June 9, 2023
Who doesn't love a good noir on the sea?
Aground and Boat Noir
Aground and Boat Noir
January 8, 2025
This is a story about murder, piracy, gun running, shipwrecked, stranded individuals, trying to get a ship run aground afloat again while a crazy lunatic fires round after round at them. With thousands of pounds of ammunition aboard and tanks filled with hundreds of gallons of gasoline, if the bullets didn't take them out, the explosion would. It all starts with a down-on-his-luck Captain Ingram being accused of stealing a schooner, or at the very least, casing the schooner for the group of thieves who made off with it. It starts with a rich blonde widow whose first husband is a clever conman. It continues with a search for a stolen vessel in an area with an eight thousand mile radius and with the blonde damsel drinking bottle of rum after bottle of rum, trying to outfox a professional gunman. It's also a passionate romance between what at first appears to be the most unlikely couple.
If that sounds like a good story, it's because it is. Charles Williams was a consummate professional writer who could take any idea and spin it into a tale that you want to hear. While this tale is not as pulpy as many of his other tales, it is some common elements you might find in his other stories including a nautical theme, a conman, desperate down-on-their-luck characters, a blonde who is about as predictable as a meteor shower, and simply a good story to tell.
This is one of several nautical thrillers that Williams wrote. He returned some years later to pen another nautical thriller with some of the same characters, "Dead Calm." This book however comes first chronologically.
If that sounds like a good story, it's because it is. Charles Williams was a consummate professional writer who could take any idea and spin it into a tale that you want to hear. While this tale is not as pulpy as many of his other tales, it is some common elements you might find in his other stories including a nautical theme, a conman, desperate down-on-their-luck characters, a blonde who is about as predictable as a meteor shower, and simply a good story to tell.
This is one of several nautical thrillers that Williams wrote. He returned some years later to pen another nautical thriller with some of the same characters, "Dead Calm." This book however comes first chronologically.
July 28, 2014
Aground is the sixteenth Charles Williams novel that I have read, and it is my least favorite. I found the characters flat (even by standards of the genre), and the dialogue was unusually wooden. But my big problem—and this is my problem, I must emphasize—is that I know nothing about boats, and most of the novel’s action is narrated in sentences such as this: “The mainsail was jib-headed, so there was only one halyard.” Had I taken pains to decipher every such sentence using appropriate resources, Aground would have taken me ages to read, and I do not know that I would have enjoyed it any more than I did. Aground’s plot centers around our hero trying to get a yacht ungrounded before the bad guys kill him. If you know about boats, you may love this book. For me, it was just a bad match.
May 31, 2009
Williams doesn't mess around - this is good old-fashioned suspense with no frills or gimmicks.
March 8, 2017
*3.5*
October 31, 2022
Another hard-boiled sailing thriller from the author of Dead Calm. This one has the same setup of a man and a woman in a desperate situation at sea, threatened less by the elements than by a psychopathic foe.
Ingram, recently recovered from serious injuries suffered in a boatyard fire, is looking for a boat to buy to get back into the charter business. The day after he inspects a schooner for sale in Key West, it gets stolen. The cops catch up with him in Miami and grill him; he convinces them he had nothing to do with the theft. Hard on the heels of the cops comes the deceased owner's widow, a nice-looking blonde with enough money to hire Ingram to find out who stole her boat and enough spirit to come along for the ride. They get more than they bargained for when they find the boat, of course, and before they know it they're in a struggle for survival on the Bahama Banks.
It's a great formula: tough guy, tough dame, scary bad guys and the implacable sea. Williams wrote several of these, and they're all good.
Ingram, recently recovered from serious injuries suffered in a boatyard fire, is looking for a boat to buy to get back into the charter business. The day after he inspects a schooner for sale in Key West, it gets stolen. The cops catch up with him in Miami and grill him; he convinces them he had nothing to do with the theft. Hard on the heels of the cops comes the deceased owner's widow, a nice-looking blonde with enough money to hire Ingram to find out who stole her boat and enough spirit to come along for the ride. They get more than they bargained for when they find the boat, of course, and before they know it they're in a struggle for survival on the Bahama Banks.
It's a great formula: tough guy, tough dame, scary bad guys and the implacable sea. Williams wrote several of these, and they're all good.
May 24, 2017
Schooner is stolen and mysteriously grounded on a sandbar in the middle of the Bahamas. Beautiful owner of the ship enlists handsome hero to help her. Turns out that gun runners were the culprits. Tight plot with exciting climax.
May 8, 2012
Would have liked it more if I'd understood the highly-specialized terminology needed to know most of what he was doing on the boat, but other than that, a perfectly delightful noir-ish read!
January 16, 2025
“Boats in trouble always left you with an uncomfortable feeling.” Big, flat-faced, limping, salty old seadog John Ingram checks into a cheap hotel in Miami, gets a visit from the cops and the next thing he knows he’s on a stuck schooner being shot at by a slime-ball from a sand spit. Much useful information about how to get tonnes of guns and ammo off a boat there follows.
This was a very enjoyable boy’s own adventure that absolutely raced past. It’s essentially a procedural laced with plenty of mystery and bullets flying everywhere most bracingly. Ingram is a rugged Competant Type with a touch of PTSD from a boating accident who worries about being a bit too long in the tooth for adventures on the high seas. Convinced by two-time married widower Rae Osbourne (not the cobwebbed dowager Ingram was expecting) to locate her stolen schooner the two end up in the sort of adventure Tintin might have and Williams is good on the details ranging from what amphibious plane you’d hire to search the ocean to how tonnes of guns might affect a magnetic compass. Williams likes his Marie Celestes and the opening sequences of the novel involving the tracking down of the missing boat and the mystery of what happened to it are well-described and engrossing. This is a novel of process, much of it involving how to get tonnes of guns and ammo off a schooner and onto a sand spit and then back again along with useful details on how to survive being run aground off said sand spit while a maniac takes pot-shots at you. There is much boat talk (“The mainsail was jib-headed, so there was only one halyard”) which to this lily-livered land-lubber was often double-dutch but it means Williams can get nail-biting suspense out of a thermostat tripping a refrigerator motor.
Once the bad guys are revealed some of the mystery dissipates but Williams keeps the complications coming and Ingram and Rae realising they have made incorrect assumptions about each other (Ingram’s opinion of Rae goes from “good looks and bad manners” to “colourful, flamboyant and undefeated”) and slowly coming to a mutual rapprochement is believably rendered. Both Ingram and Rae seem to have run psychically aground in life and need something to nudge them off into blue waters once again and not surprisingly lots of terror and trauma does the trick; Williams even has Rae be pleasingly self-aware about the likelihood of romance blossoming under such circumstances. Rae – the only woman in this novel – is of course jolly easy on the eye but Williams is far more likely to wax lyrical about the lines of a boat than the lines of a woman and there is a noticeable lack of schoolboy leering here. This, plus the overall absence of sentimentality and tweeness in this essentially romantic tale of two people falling in love means the tale feels rather adult. It’s a pity Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman didn’t film this after “Dead Calm”.
This is the sort of short novel that Williams seems to have idly rattled out between Bahamian sailing trips. Yet another thoroughly enjoyable yarn, I haven't read a dud from him yet. “There might possibly be other things in the world more unpredictable than a woman with too much to drink, but he’d never run into any of them.”
This was a very enjoyable boy’s own adventure that absolutely raced past. It’s essentially a procedural laced with plenty of mystery and bullets flying everywhere most bracingly. Ingram is a rugged Competant Type with a touch of PTSD from a boating accident who worries about being a bit too long in the tooth for adventures on the high seas. Convinced by two-time married widower Rae Osbourne (not the cobwebbed dowager Ingram was expecting) to locate her stolen schooner the two end up in the sort of adventure Tintin might have and Williams is good on the details ranging from what amphibious plane you’d hire to search the ocean to how tonnes of guns might affect a magnetic compass. Williams likes his Marie Celestes and the opening sequences of the novel involving the tracking down of the missing boat and the mystery of what happened to it are well-described and engrossing. This is a novel of process, much of it involving how to get tonnes of guns and ammo off a schooner and onto a sand spit and then back again along with useful details on how to survive being run aground off said sand spit while a maniac takes pot-shots at you. There is much boat talk (“The mainsail was jib-headed, so there was only one halyard”) which to this lily-livered land-lubber was often double-dutch but it means Williams can get nail-biting suspense out of a thermostat tripping a refrigerator motor.
Once the bad guys are revealed some of the mystery dissipates but Williams keeps the complications coming and Ingram and Rae realising they have made incorrect assumptions about each other (Ingram’s opinion of Rae goes from “good looks and bad manners” to “colourful, flamboyant and undefeated”) and slowly coming to a mutual rapprochement is believably rendered. Both Ingram and Rae seem to have run psychically aground in life and need something to nudge them off into blue waters once again and not surprisingly lots of terror and trauma does the trick; Williams even has Rae be pleasingly self-aware about the likelihood of romance blossoming under such circumstances. Rae – the only woman in this novel – is of course jolly easy on the eye but Williams is far more likely to wax lyrical about the lines of a boat than the lines of a woman and there is a noticeable lack of schoolboy leering here. This, plus the overall absence of sentimentality and tweeness in this essentially romantic tale of two people falling in love means the tale feels rather adult. It’s a pity Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman didn’t film this after “Dead Calm”.
This is the sort of short novel that Williams seems to have idly rattled out between Bahamian sailing trips. Yet another thoroughly enjoyable yarn, I haven't read a dud from him yet. “There might possibly be other things in the world more unpredictable than a woman with too much to drink, but he’d never run into any of them.”
December 9, 2025
"Everybody, he supposed, had something he hated above all else to leave, and this was his: the tropic sea. In a dozen lifetimes he’d never have grown tired of it."
Doesn't get much better than this, a crime thriller set at sea, or "aground" as it were. John Ingram gets tricked into participating in the theft of a yacht The Dragoon, owned by a widow Rae Osbourne, Ingram feels some responsibility for the theft and decides to help Mrs. Osbourne find the missing boat. What follows is an adventure that includes finding the yacht aground and occupied by a couple of murderous, gun running psychos with nothing but bad intentions. This is my second novel by Charles Williams and it was a fun, entertaining read, book two Dead Calm is already on my list!
Doesn't get much better than this, a crime thriller set at sea, or "aground" as it were. John Ingram gets tricked into participating in the theft of a yacht The Dragoon, owned by a widow Rae Osbourne, Ingram feels some responsibility for the theft and decides to help Mrs. Osbourne find the missing boat. What follows is an adventure that includes finding the yacht aground and occupied by a couple of murderous, gun running psychos with nothing but bad intentions. This is my second novel by Charles Williams and it was a fun, entertaining read, book two Dead Calm is already on my list!
November 9, 2025
Short Review for the time poor
Start 4 11 25 Completed 9.11 25
A recent online purchase, the 1971 Pocket Book Edition , first time read of a novel by CW
The novel is a compact 160 pages
It is set in the USA in the mid 20th Century
The story in essence is about a missing Schooner and how the main character John Ingram is employed by the Boat’s owner to find it and those responsible for taking it
The novel falters towards its conclusion and it lacked the panache and drive of the highest quality fiction of this type but Williams is a writer whose other work I would seek and and read more of
Rounded down to 2.5
Start 4 11 25 Completed 9.11 25
A recent online purchase, the 1971 Pocket Book Edition , first time read of a novel by CW
The novel is a compact 160 pages
It is set in the USA in the mid 20th Century
The story in essence is about a missing Schooner and how the main character John Ingram is employed by the Boat’s owner to find it and those responsible for taking it
The novel falters towards its conclusion and it lacked the panache and drive of the highest quality fiction of this type but Williams is a writer whose other work I would seek and and read more of
Rounded down to 2.5
May 19, 2025
I recently watched Dead Calm (1989) for the first time and thought it was an intriguing story and watched the end credits to see if it was based on a novel. Sure enough it was and when I looked into reading it, I realized Dead Calm was #2 in a short series be Charles Williams. So, of course, I read Aground (#1) first before I'll read Dead Calm. This was excellent and I was never bored from beginning to end. I'd highly recommend it, especially for fans of this kind of Men's Adventure short novels from the 50's - 60's era and fans of nautical adventures.
February 10, 2025
Fun nautical thriller from the 60s, and the prequel to Dead Calm, which was adapted into an Australian movie of the same name featuring Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. I actually watched the movie first and enjoyed it so much I decided to read the books. Written in a very readable and zippy style.
October 9, 2018
Nothing really much here to get the modern reader overly excited
Published in 1960, the Novel centre's around a stolen ship and
the determination of the lady owner & the guy who offers her
to help get it back. Pretty run of the mill stuff, no surprises.
Published in 1960, the Novel centre's around a stolen ship and
the determination of the lady owner & the guy who offers her
to help get it back. Pretty run of the mill stuff, no surprises.
July 16, 2023
Another excellent ocean-going tale by Charles Williams set near the Bahamas. A bit of a prequel to his Dead Calm with the stolen sailing yacht Dragoon front and center. Just top-notch writing style and fast-paced action beginning to end.
May 8, 2018
Great fast read about bad guys on a boat out of Key West. Looking forward to the next in this two book series “Dead Calm”.
June 23, 2020
Published in 1960; classic noir.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
May 7, 2021
Great plot and start to the Ingram books.
September 14, 2021
I think he wanted to show off how much he learned about boats.
April 8, 2025
A quick paced quick read. Characters are not fully baked, but one isn't reading for the character development. It appears to be a precursor to Dead Calm, which I plan to read next.
February 4, 2023
Enjoyable nautical crime thriller from 1960 that's a prequel to the more famous novel Dead Calm, which was made into a tense movie starring Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman in 1989. It's reminiscent of the nautical crime thrillers by John D. MacDonald.
The book has an interesting setup. Charter captain John Ingram, recently co-owner of a boat repair business in Puerto Rico until fire destroyed it, is hired by a man named Hollister to scout for a boat to purchase in Florida. After inspecting a schooner in Key West that seems in good condition, he calls Hollister to let him know and heads back to Miami. Soon after he gets there, two police detectives show up at his fleabag hotel. Turns out the boat was stolen, and Ingram is a suspect. But Ingram isn't a thief. Hollister merely used him as a patsy to find a suitable boat to steal.
The owner of the boat, Rae Osborne, an attractive young widow, wants her boat back, and she hires Ingram to help her find it. They charter a plane, and after a lengthy search they find the boat stuck on the Great Bahama Bank. They also find the two men who stole it.
The rest of the book is a suspenseful contest between the two violent thieves/gun runners and Ingram and Rae, who are determined to retrieve the boat.
Williams employs a third person limited point of view focused on Ingram, who proves to be an interesting, intelligent, and sympathetic character from which to tell a story. At the start of the novel, it's not even clear whether Ingram, who's still recovering from injuries sustained from the fire, is the protagonist. For much of book, he's puzzled and intrigued by Rae, who continually surprises him. Williams takes his sweet time developing their relationship.
Williams' prose is technically precise, and his persistent use of nautical jargon isn't a problem for landlubber ebook readers (like me), who can conveniently touch a word on screen to see its definition. Such jargon lends authenticity. After all, a binnacle is nothing but a binnacle. Williams, a former merchant marine and an avid sailor, knew his way around a boat.
Aground is all about limitations. It has a small cast of characters, an extremely limited setting (half the book takes place on a sandbar), a minor mystery (who was Hollister?), and a slow-burn romance. There's also an intriguing technical mystery behind why the boat ran aground, which may not be so mysterious to experienced sailors. It all works. I kept turning the pages, and my interest escalated, the mark of a good thriller.
Ingram and Rae make a refreshing, down-to-earth couple. It's no wonder that Williams featured them in a sequel.
The book has an interesting setup. Charter captain John Ingram, recently co-owner of a boat repair business in Puerto Rico until fire destroyed it, is hired by a man named Hollister to scout for a boat to purchase in Florida. After inspecting a schooner in Key West that seems in good condition, he calls Hollister to let him know and heads back to Miami. Soon after he gets there, two police detectives show up at his fleabag hotel. Turns out the boat was stolen, and Ingram is a suspect. But Ingram isn't a thief. Hollister merely used him as a patsy to find a suitable boat to steal.
The owner of the boat, Rae Osborne, an attractive young widow, wants her boat back, and she hires Ingram to help her find it. They charter a plane, and after a lengthy search they find the boat stuck on the Great Bahama Bank. They also find the two men who stole it.
The rest of the book is a suspenseful contest between the two violent thieves/gun runners and Ingram and Rae, who are determined to retrieve the boat.
Williams employs a third person limited point of view focused on Ingram, who proves to be an interesting, intelligent, and sympathetic character from which to tell a story. At the start of the novel, it's not even clear whether Ingram, who's still recovering from injuries sustained from the fire, is the protagonist. For much of book, he's puzzled and intrigued by Rae, who continually surprises him. Williams takes his sweet time developing their relationship.
Williams' prose is technically precise, and his persistent use of nautical jargon isn't a problem for landlubber ebook readers (like me), who can conveniently touch a word on screen to see its definition. Such jargon lends authenticity. After all, a binnacle is nothing but a binnacle. Williams, a former merchant marine and an avid sailor, knew his way around a boat.
Aground is all about limitations. It has a small cast of characters, an extremely limited setting (half the book takes place on a sandbar), a minor mystery (who was Hollister?), and a slow-burn romance. There's also an intriguing technical mystery behind why the boat ran aground, which may not be so mysterious to experienced sailors. It all works. I kept turning the pages, and my interest escalated, the mark of a good thriller.
Ingram and Rae make a refreshing, down-to-earth couple. It's no wonder that Williams featured them in a sequel.
January 22, 2026
30% of this book is completely lost to me bc im not rich enough to own a boat
April 24, 2023
Charles Williams was a marvel. He possessed a rare gift for storytelling, an uncanny ability to suck you into a tale and make you feel like you are right there, living it with the characters.
This novel, from 1960, is about a man who is hired by a beautiful blonde to find her stolen schooner that is somewhere in the Caribbean. They find the schooner alright, and loads of trouble along with it. I'll not say more, except that the story is genuinely thrilling. I kept thinking the book would make a great movie.
I dropped one star because of the extensive "boat talk" that carries on throughout the book. I know nothing about boats, and found all the lengthy descriptions baffling. However, anyone who does know boats will no doubt enjoy them. But don't let the "boat talk" keep you from reading the book. You can skim over them if need be and still enjoy a terrific thriller.
This novel, from 1960, is about a man who is hired by a beautiful blonde to find her stolen schooner that is somewhere in the Caribbean. They find the schooner alright, and loads of trouble along with it. I'll not say more, except that the story is genuinely thrilling. I kept thinking the book would make a great movie.
I dropped one star because of the extensive "boat talk" that carries on throughout the book. I know nothing about boats, and found all the lengthy descriptions baffling. However, anyone who does know boats will no doubt enjoy them. But don't let the "boat talk" keep you from reading the book. You can skim over them if need be and still enjoy a terrific thriller.
December 31, 2024
Segona novel·la de Charles Williams que llegeixo i també molt entretinguda, encara que en aquesta he trobat a faltar la primera persona que tant em va agradar a “Una vela per mortalla”.
Un veler, altre cop.
Quin saber el de Williams envers embarcacions a vela i navegació. Quantes paraules i referències pròpies del ram.
Aparells, parts de l’embarcació, mètodes. Jo que soc un llec en tot això, en alguna situació ja em perdia seguint les evolucions d’Ingram amb les cordes i politges.
Segur que aquesta novel·la ha de fer les delícies de l'afeccionat a la navegació amb veler.
No la veig com una genuïna novel·la negra.
Sí que la policia fa acte de presència però, vista en conjunt, la trobo més com una barreja de novel·la d’aventures i thriller. El gat i la rata i com escapar de la trampa.
Bona novel·la.
Un veler, altre cop.
Quin saber el de Williams envers embarcacions a vela i navegació. Quantes paraules i referències pròpies del ram.
Aparells, parts de l’embarcació, mètodes. Jo que soc un llec en tot això, en alguna situació ja em perdia seguint les evolucions d’Ingram amb les cordes i politges.
Segur que aquesta novel·la ha de fer les delícies de l'afeccionat a la navegació amb veler.
No la veig com una genuïna novel·la negra.
Sí que la policia fa acte de presència però, vista en conjunt, la trobo més com una barreja de novel·la d’aventures i thriller. El gat i la rata i com escapar de la trampa.
Bona novel·la.
December 17, 2010
Not the best Charles Williams has to offer...
April 3, 2012
unlike its follow-up, this is not intriguing in terms of characters and leaves the reader with a very boring action story.
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