The Golden Keel By Desmond Bagley

Golden Keel Solid action packed story, easy to follow, with fleshed out characters Setting its about decade after the end of the second world war 3 ex soldiers come together to recover Nazi gold and jewels they buiried in the Italian mountains during the war. A raft of criminals and an arrogant smuggler are tracking these 3 men but with the help of a beautiful woman who has grit, is tough and has brains to spare gets them clear with the gold, her with the jewels. It all comes to a head facing the smuggler on the sea. Desmond Bagley debut story is just fantastic, definately clipped along at a frantic pace, well worth it totally an action packed boys own story next is his story Landslide. Desmond Bagley Desmond Bagley! I love this guy's writing! I've always been a fan of Alistair Maclean. He's basically the old master of adventure-spy stories: Guns of Navarone, Black Shrike, Fear is the Key. Amazing, fun stuff. Anyway, I discovered Bagley much later in life. He's never had the name power of Maclean, but I consider him a slightly better writer. His stories are squarely in the same genre, but they have a more character-driven, psychological component to them.

The Golden Keel was the first Bagley story I ever read. I suppose, coming from a family that mucks about on ocean boats (and having married a deep ocean sailer), the story resonated strongly with me. However, it's just a cracking good story. Romance, intrigue, harrowing get-aways, exotic locations. Bagley, like Maclean, is great with locations. Here, Italy and North Africa are used to wonderful effect.

If you enjoy good old straightforward adventure stories where you can empathize with the protagonist and not feel like you've been dragged through the gutter...then the Golden Keel's for you.

All of Bagley's books are on my list of books that I want to own in physical format. Desmond Bagley As always with Desmond Bagley, a nice thrilling adventure, where male are dominant and woman are strong and beautiful. A classic rough, though post war story complete with gems & guns. Desmond Bagley Probably a 3.5, it was a good adventure story set in Italy and the Mediterranean. Desmond Bagley Book 10 of 2017 is The Golden Keel by Desmond Bagley.

People often ask me how I find books from vast arrays of genres. The answer is that I go off recommendations from my friends. That is why GoodReads my primary reading discovery source.

In the case of this book, I picked it up because Desmond Bagley was one of my Mum's favourite authors when I was a child. In fact, both my parents enjoyed The Golden Keel. That made this book extra meaningful to me.

Books that people recommend are a glimpse in to who they are. Once I witness someone share many similar book likes with me, I learn to trust them implicitly and vice versa with books some have like that I did not.

The Golden Keel is a great heist adventure on stormy seas with pirates and unusually for my normal set, characters from South Africa and Italy.

My tropical Mum told me today (when I was half way through this book) that the first time she read the word avalanche was in one of his books and he described it perfectly. That brought an awareness when I was finishing this. This book talks about sailing and a lot of books do but Bagley describes perfectly what a concept or actual thing is in a way that is easy to understand. That is a talent, especially with sailing terms. He also described being trapped under something heavy in a way I felt I'd experienced in ways although I never had.

If you pick this up, keep in mind that it was written in 1963 and reflects the post war boom times in many countries. That said, it could be set right now too.

5 heavy keels out of 5.

Should I read this? For sure. It is a funny and easy read.

What did I learn? I need to read more books about great adventures. Why did I ever stop? Desmond Bagley

Mussolini's missing treasure - worth three million pounds - lies hidden in Italy.

Peter Halloran, a migrant to South Africa after the end of World War II has established himself in a successful and profitable designer and builder of yachts and small watercraft. Life is good – business is good, and he has a beautiful wife and daughter. One day, in the local yacht club bar, he meets Walter, an alcoholic ex-soldier, who tells him an improbable tale of a hidden treasure. When Walter was a prisoner of war in Fascist Italy, he managed to escape with a small band of Allied prisoners, including an Afrikaner named Coertze and some Italian partisans, and waged a guerilla campaign for several months in the hills of Liguria against the Nazi Germans. Towards the end of the war, their band ambushed a truck convoy, which contained a massive treasure in gold bars, jewels and even the State Crown of Ethiopia. Rather than turn the treasure over to the authorities, they hid the trucks in an abandoned mine and sealed the entrance. Now that the war is over, the treasure is for the claiming, provided that they can think of some way to smuggle it past Italian customs.

Halloran thinks little of the tale until several years later, when life has turned sour, he finds that he needs a change in life. A chance re-encounter with Walker leads to a meeting with Coertze, and with the three men agreeing to a partnership to recover the treasure. Walker and Coertze know where it is, and Halloran has the perfect solution to getting it out of the country. But questions start to worry Halloran – such as why only Walker and Coertze survived out of the much larger group of guerillas, and why Walker is so terrified of Coertze? The mystery deepens as the men travel to Tangiers, and from thence to ports around the Mediterranean and find their steps dogged by unsavory characters. It is soon clear that they are not the only ones after the treasure... The Golden Keel

“Catapults him straight into the Alistair MacLean bracket” trumpeted the Sunday Times of Bagley’s debut novel. And they weren’t kidding: ‘The Golden Keel’ is easily as good as MacLean at his absolute best. Bagley’s trademarks - economical storytelling, wry humour, tense action set-pieces - are right here at the outset, along with a hefty dollop of man vs the elements drama that wouldn’t be out of place in a Hammond Innes novel. Desmond Bagley Rip roaring adventure story. Still holds up very well. In fact, it's better than most thrillers getting cranked out today as if they were cloned. Desmond Bagley
Published in 1963, this was Bagley's first thriller. Apart from a slightly pedestrian style at the very beginning as the scene is set, it sets the reader on a roller coaster ride of 'thrills' as a successful small businessman pulls together a team to recover gold and other goodies hidden in the war.

They say you should write about what you know so Bagley gives us a partial alter ego who, like him, is an English emigre to South Africa who has made a success of himself in a minor way (in Bagley's case as journalist) and then adds some knowledge from working in the gold industry.

The novel is what you would want and without pretension. It is largely very well written, unliterary (which is a blessing) and with sufficient knowledgeable detail to create verisimilitude without boring or confusing the reader - though it might help to be a yachtsman in places.

The crew is interesting with a few plot twists and turns - a weak alcoholic and a troublesome and aggressive South African Boer who know where the gold is hidden, joined later by the 'love interest' (handled curtly and not interrupting the flow) in Francesca with her gang of former partisans.

Characterisation is excellent with many side characters of which the most interesting (enough to regret that Bagley was not to use him more than once) is the smuggler/gangster Metcalfe who is possibly the most intrinsically likeable sociopath ever to appear in fiction.

The action moves from South Africa to Tangier (with a nice picture of an anarchic trading post in its last days of freedom, a Beirut before Beirut) and then to Rapallo and the Ligurian hills where the gold is buried, with some wild sea action inbetween.

There is nothing too deep to say about this book which is possibly why it is so enjoyable. The story is set in a marginal world where the events of the Second World War are in their final stages of resolution before the action is going to have to move to more exotic climes.

In 1963, the capture of Mussolini's gold and its recovery and the anti-communist partisans seem like a swansong for the dominant wartime thrillers of the 1950s but it is largely set in the 'present' and it is no accident that Metcalfe is inclined to give up on Tangier for the Congo.

The other thing to note is that these people are unsentimental (except when in love and then rather practical about the business) and only interested in profit. A huge cache of papers of huge historical interest is of no interest - only tradeable gold and jewels.

Money (capital) is there to meet personal dreams and freedom from subservience. This is not a bunch of people who trust each other very much. The stab in the back is assumed at all times. This is not a collective enterprise so much as a temporary merger of self-interested pirates.

In this, Bagley captures much of the post-war mentality of the last of the old imperial generation still under the delusion of an empire (the book was published only as Macmillan was unravelling that delusion) - individualist, exploitative, competitive, 'macho', entrepreneurial and tough.

It is also an essay in leadership. Halloran, our hero, is not only leader because he finances the expedition (the businesslike nature of petty organised crime is well explained here) but because he is the best psychologist and the most intelligent in what starts out as a company of equals.

If there is something to take out of this book other than enjoyment, it is Bagley's take on how alpha males become alpha males, what constitutes weakness and strength, what deserves respect or disdain and when to act and when not to act.

Although from an entirely different world to ours, young men and women today could learn things from old-fashioned thrillers like these without necessarily abandoning what we have learned since. Francesca, incidentally, is clearly as 'alpha' as Halloran and more so than most males in the tale.

The lightly-worn Halloran-Francesca relationship has its interest in this context, if only because Halloran is recovering from the death of a much-loved wife in an accident but this is a new Halloran and a committed 'alpha' adventuress is pretty close to most alpha male dreams.

The implication of the story is that, if his wife had lived, Halloran would have done the conventional thing and built his boat-building business to a prosperous retirement. Loss has turned him into an adventurer and his mate must now be an adventuress but a loyal one too.

Nothing better describes the two sides of the male psyche that thrillers are designed to tap. Most readers chose or are stuck in the former world but those readers are reading these thrillers because they crave the world created by loss where risks can be taken.

It is actually an attempt to revert to an early state of youthful adventure. After all, Halloran ended up in South Africa as the result of a risk-taking adventure and made something of himself. Once the structure of that achievement had been broken, he had to start again to 'find a mate'.

The implication is that he may not end up a career adventurer after all. The second start simply returns him to where he was - a more experienced boat builder with a new wife and a possible family. And that might in itself be psychologically reassuring to the reader.

After all, it is all very well vicariously experiencing such 'thrills' but the right sort of ending is still required - a reaffirmation of the conservative order of solid business achievement and household. And, by the way, that is not a spoiler, just an interpretation of something that surprises to the end.

The point is that post-war late-imperial Britain was simultaneously built on adventurism and reliant on conformity. Literature of this sort had an unconscious mission to square the implicit dialectic and its best works generally do.

Within a few years, the 1960s would have cast great doubt on conformity while the end of empire would wind down the opportunities for independent non-criminal adventure - or rather much adventure would be redefined as criminal where once it was just entrepreneurial risk-taking.

It is as if the two worlds of conformity and risk-taking swapped places to create an entirely different culture with the same basic dialectic - domestic life became a game of risk-taking and economic life a game of global corporate and managerial conformity.

This may be why there is no communication between the British past and the liberal present. Thrillers like Bagley's allow us to open the door on the past and take stock of what we have gained but also what we have lost.

Desmond Bagley Bagley's fist novel and it is a terrific lean adventure thriller. The sailing scenes are particularly good and the plot is clever. Desmond Bagley What a thriller !! I remember reading this book in one go. I started this book around late morning and completed it by the evening, in one sitting. I didn't even realize that I had skipped lunch and by the time I finished this book, I was ravenous! Hungry like a caveman! :) I just didn't notice the time pass by.

The plot and the language used in this book are simple, clear and succinct. Right from the first page itself you're sucked into the story and before you know it, you'll be eagerly turning the pages to know what happened next.

The story starts on an ordinary note, with the protagonist describing himself, his lonely life and how he yearns for adventure since a personal tragedy. A chance encounter with an old friend in a bar reveals the location of a treasure hidden during the second world war, a treasure which will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. And from there the fun starts.

Where there is treasure, there is also adventure, action, thieves and tons of twists and turns. The plot is riveting and the pace Super-fast as each page brings in unexpected encounters accompanied by deception, danger and betrayal, with a love story thrown in between all leading to an unexpected and surprising climax.

Sometime back, I chanced to come upon this book under my friend's possession and borrowed it to read it again. And even now, I received the same amount of pleasure reading this book as I did back then.

I would definitely rank this book as one of the best books I have read ever. Desmond Bagley

read The Golden Keel