Best 1947 Adventures (7)
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June 11, 2017
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1947 adventure novels. Happy 70th anniversary!
Hammond Innes’s treasure-hunt adventure Killer Mine (aka Run By Night).
A somewhat formulaic effort — immediately after the war, during which he served with distinction in the Royal Artillery, Innes was publishing one to two books per year — but still a fun read. Jim Pryce, a British soldier who’d deserted his unit in Italy, smuggles himself back to his native Cornwall and — after surviving an attack that leaves him nearly dead — seeks work as a miner with a Captain Manack, who is opening up a “killer” mine where several women had died in the past… including Pryce’s own mother. Pryce falls in love with a servant girl, discovers the truth about the mine (smugglers!), and must foil the villains before they kill again. Innes excels here, as always, with his anthropologically “thick” description of the local culture, not to mention the plot’s various thrills and chills.
Fun fact: Not to be confused with Mickey Spillane’s tawdry 1965 crime novel Killer Mine, which has nothing to do with mining.
Let me know if I’ve missed any 1947 adventures that you particularly admire.