Our favorite Action/Adventure novelist

Traveling between Salisbury and Royal Tunbridge Wells will allow us to see the birthplace of my favorite action/adventure novelist, Hammond Innes. Since we've been doing books on tape on our longer automobile trips, Concetta has grown to love his stories, too.

Ralph Hammond Innes (July 15, 1914 – June 10, 1998) was an English author who wrote over 30 novels, as well as children's and travel books. He was born in Horsham, Sussex (more or less on our route between Salisbury and Tunbridge Wells) and educated at Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist, initially with the Financial Times (at the time called the Financial News). The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. In WWII he served in the Royal Artillery, eventually rising to the rank of Major. During the war, a number of his books were published, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1941) and Attack Alarm (1941), the latter novel using Innes' experiences as an Anti-Aircraft Gunner during the Battle of Britain. After being demobbed, in 1946 he worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for a fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of places, such as in Air Bridge (1951), set partially at RAF Gatow, RAF Membury after its closure and RAF Wunstorf during the Berlin Airlift. Innes went on to produce books in a regular sequence of six months of travel and research and then six months of writing, with many of these works featuring the sea. His rate of work was reduced from the 1960s, but was still substantial, and he became interested in ecological themes. He continued writing until just before his death. His last novel was Delta Connection (1996). Four of his earlier novels were made into films: Snowbound (1948) from The Lonely Skier (1947), Hell Below Zero (1954) from The White South (1949), Campbell's Kingdom (1957) from the book of the same name (1952) and The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) also from the book of the same name (1956). His 1973 novel Golden Soak was adapted into a six-part television series in 1979. His great love and experience of the sea, as an experienced yachtsman, was reflected in many of his novels. This was also reflected in his leaving the bulk of his estate on his death to the Association of Sea Training Organisations, to gain training and experience in sailing the element he loved. (The foregoing was borrowed from Wikipedia)

My favorite of his novels are The White South and The Land God Gave to Cain, but I've read nearly all the books listed here and can honestly say every one is a winner!