''Shoal Water'' is a 1940 novel by the English author

Dornford Yates Cecil William Mercer (7 August 1885 – 5 March 1960), known by his pen name Dornford Yates, was an English writer and novelist whose novels and short stories, some humorous (the ''Berry'' books), some Thriller (genre), thrillers (the ''Chandos ...

(Cecil William Mercer). It was first serialised in ''

Blue Book A blue book or bluebook is an almanac, buyer's guide or other compilation of statistics and information. The term dates back to the 15th century, when large blue velvet-covered books were used for record-keeping by the Parliament of England. The ...

'' between July and October 1940, as ''When The Devil Drives'', with illustrations by

Austin Briggs Austin Briggs (September 8, 1908 – October 10, 1973) was a cartoonist and illustrator. Born in Humboldt, Minnesota he grew up in Detroit, Michigan before moving to New York City as a teenager. After working for a while at an advertising ...

Plot

Jeremy Solon (narrator) falls in with Katherine Scrope and learns she has been blackmailed into doing duty as a carrier for jewel thieves. She is kidnapped, and Solon and his companions – now including Jonathan Mansel – set out to rescue her.

Background

The dust jacket of the first edition bears on the back the words "The making of this book enabled me to forget the gathering clouds: it is my great hope that the reading of it will enable others to forget the storm."

Critical reception

Mercer's biographer AJ Smithers, writing in 1982, noted that this novel and the preceding one, ''

Gale Warning A gale warning is an alert issued by national weather forecasting agencies around the world in an event that maritime locations currently or imminently experiencing winds of gale force on the Beaufort scale. Gale warnings (and gale watches) a ...

'', are written to a pattern, though one that is cunningly woven. He considered both books to be swiftly moving, just plausible, and to still bear re-reading after all these years. The second half of the book bears considerable resemblance to A. E. W. Mason's 1935 novel '' They Wouldn't Be Chessmen''.

References

Bibliography

* {{Books by Dornford Yates 1940 British novels British thriller novels Ward, Lock & Co. books Novels by Dornford Yates