Wyatt's Hurricane - Desmond Bagley

First published 1966. Harper Collins paperback, 2017, pp 307, c. 101,000 words.

This is a highly entertaining mid-twentieth century thriller. It has the usual protagonist of a man out of his element facing danger – in this case the man is a meteorologist, and the twin dangers he is facing are a hurricane and a civil war. There is considerable originality in the setting: a small independent Caribbean island. The protagonist is a native of that region, albeit white. There is a fine mix of supporting characters: the protagonist’s American air-hostess girlfriend, a middle age British consul, a journalist, an American novelist who has developed an image in the Hemingway mould, and a range of locals, good and bad, as well as members of an American military base. There are some excellent set-pieces, most notably in connection with the hurricane, but also in the well evoked chaos of war.

The book opens with the meteorologist, David Wyatt, deliberately flying into a hurricane to measure it. This gives us the chance to understand the tremendous forces at play in such a storm, and also the character of the man: ‘Deafened by the murderous sound and shaken like dice in a cup, they still managed to get on with their work.’ [p13]. A nice simile in that sentence.

The initial part is told from Wyatt’s point of view, but from page 89 there are increasing interventions from the point of view of other characters. On the whole Bagley manages this difficult structure well; the bumps are not too severe, and the frustration of stopping one story thread while another is taken up is not too painful. The structure has the effect of giving the reader more a panoramic perspective of what is going on, rather than the visceral dynamic of a single point of view.

There are a couple of perhaps archaic words I had to look up: ‘clabbery’ which seems to mean something like muddy and in this case is a colour: ‘thick, clabbery yellow light’ [p245], and ‘debouching’ [p229], which I’m told is ‘to emerge from a confined space’ and could be guessed at from the context. Other things I didn’t know include that the ‘Seabees’ [p153] is a US naval construction battalion, and that ‘Edmund Dantes’ [p129] was the original name of the Count of Monte Cristo from the novel of that name, and who managed to escape from a highly secure prison.

Bagley tries to give us character development but it is a bit clunky. The arrogant and macho American becomes a reformed character, Wyatt learns a little realism and his girlfriend decides he is the one for her. There are some stock characters here: the thoughtful base commander, the blinkered military dictator, the more open minded, but pragmatic rebel leader. This type of book is about pace and action and one does not expect fine characterisation, indeed that might get in the way of the page-turner quality. One can simply enjoy hissing at the villains and cheering the heroes.

This is one of the best of Bagley’s thrillers. The plot is coherent and the pace excellent. A great escapist read of its type.

Wikipedia biography of Bagley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Bagley

Wikipedia Summary of the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt%27s_Hurricane

Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/129828.Wyatt_s_Hurricane?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17