The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a group of skiers meet in the southern Alps. But they’re not there for the skiing, and most of them are armed…
Demobilised and broke, Englishman Neil Blair accepts an odd assignment: to spy on the guests of a remote ski chalet in the Dolomites. They’re an unusual lot and tensions run high: a scarlet woman, a deserter, a pimp, a Nazi agent, and a film director. Blair is “the sheep among the wolves” - narrating events beyond his control.
Blair’s skiing sequence is the highlight of the book. The weather turns and in classic Hammond Innes style man must battle nature to survive. It’s Blair’s lonely skier moment, but he’s not the only character vying for the title.
Film director Derek Engles casts himself as the lonely skier in a script of the same name. Throughout the book, numerous references are made to how spectacular a film version of the events would be. The characters speculate on what might motivate murder amongst fictional versions of themselves, not realising that murder is indeed being plotted.
But it’s not the postmodern that’s at play here, it’s the past. The Second World War smoulders in memory and it’s the allegiances and enmities forged during that conflict which drive the characters here.
I’m an Innes fan and reading this was my pre-Christmas treat, but The Lonely Skier is second-rate fare. The plot is skimpy, the characters underdeveloped. The men brood and smoke, wrapped in manly mystery, the women purr and scratch, and the buried treasure is old hat. That said, The Lonely Skier was published in 1948: seventy years ago war legacies would have been breaking news.
The detecting of the offstage denouement is interesting: Blair, the first person narrator, pieces together the finale from evidence in the snow. It’s an unusual treatment for the grand show-down, but removing the finale from the narrative is like promising cake and serving instead the bill. There are simply not enough thrills here; better to read Hammond Innes’ The Wreck of the Mary Deare or Campbell’s Kingdom.
What to Read Next?
A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré: old spies reunite
The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes: a classic sea adventure
Campbell’s Kingdom by Hammond Innes: a slow-burning, technical thriller set in the Canadian Rockies
