Scend of the Sea

Weaving fact and fiction into the fabric of an absorbing novel, Geoffrey Jenkins has written a highly imaginative story of adventure on the high seas. Early in the twentieth centurey a crack passenger liner, the *Waratah,* went down in a raging storm off the coast of Soth Africa in a tragedy that left neither survivors nor witnesses. A half century later a South African airliner disappeared over the very same spot in another gale, again without trace or explanation. Exhaustive investigations by numerous official bodies produced no explanation of either tragedy. Now Geoffrey Jenkins has linked them in a dramatic novel that deals with three generations of the same family: Douglas Fairlie,first officer the the *Waratah;* Bruce Fairlie, piot of the vanished airliner; and Ian Fairlie, the hero of The Hollow Sea. Ian Fairlie grew up with an infleible determination to solve the mystery of the *Waratah’s* end. Later his determination was strengthened by the airliner crash — and by his knowledge, as captain of the weathership that no shipping of offshore oil exploration woud be safe until the mystery had been solved. In the face of both official opposition and gale swept seas, at the risk of his career and of his very life, Ian set himself to unravel the secret of what had happened to the other Fairlies and to avoid the fate that had trapped them. His dedication was such that his friends and sueperious alike came to fear his quest had become an irrational obsession, and only one loyal and beautiful woman, Tafline, stood beside him as he faced being discredited. The, finally, in the heart of another raging storm, Ian Fairlie, with Tafline at his side, faced the opportunity to obtain the answer he had long sought to the mystery. As he seizes it, The Hollow Sea reaches a tremendously exciting climax.