False Cargo
4/5
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About this ebook
Going undercover and posing as ruthless killer Spike O’Brien, Calloway quickly discovers that on this ship nothing is what it seems, and no one can be trusted. With so much insurance money at stake, and the whole crew apparently in on the scam, this could end up being a voyage to the bottom of the sea. . . .
And when the real Spike O’Brien shows up, it’s Calloway who’ll need a good insurance policy. Because life is cheap when the stakes are so high—on a ship of lies bearing a False Cargo.
A veteran sailor who had voyaged long and far, L. Ron Hubbard knew well the life at sea. He once wrote in his journal: “There is something magnificently terrible about a savage sea in the unwholesome green of half-dawn. . . . The ship is an unreal, fragile thing, full of strange groans, and engine and sails are dwarfed in their puny power when matched to all the countless horsepower in wave and wind and current. The whole world is an awesome threat. Alone, wet, hungry, hand cramped upon a tiller, a sailor knows more truth in those hours than all mankind in his millions of years.”
Also includes the sea adventure Grounded, in which a Royal Air Force lieutenant loses a friend and tarnishes his reputation, and sets out in search of redemption . . . no matter the price.
L. Ron Hubbard
With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most enduring and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard. Then too, of course, there is all L. Ron Hubbard represents as the Founder of Dianetics and Scientology and thus the only major religion born in the 20th century.
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Reviews for False Cargo
6 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hubbard’s False Cargo is a collection of shorts from his 1930s/1940s pulp fiction period.
False Cargo is typical of such he-man stories, but there are enough plot twists to keep the reader interested. Hubbard is especially good at writing accuracy into his stories, such that the glossary at the back of the book really comes in handy.
Brent Calloway has been good at breaking up gangs and insurance scams but this one is different. He seems to have met his match in a bar, a fat drunk by the name of O’Brian. Pretending to be the drunk, he gets himself hired as a mercenary to wreck a ship and have the owners collect the insurance.
Good story. I liked the way the description of the ships, enough tossing and turning and a few near misses of a fast-whining bullet to keep me seasick and scared. Not a lot of romance, but enough to satisfy.
Grounded is another one, though an inferior tale to False Cargo. Somewhere off the China coast, ships are run through a river where ambushes often happen. The narrator is one of the crew and accepts aboard a captain who rumor has it that he let a man die in a plane accident. He got a chute and his partner didn’t!
Themes of this tale are pretty clear: Don’t buy rumors. And a man who has to live with a bad repute can still pull things together and make it all go right. The ending for me did not flow well. I may have to reread it!
Bottom Line: Good collection of adventure/ship yarns. Great example of pulp fiction of the time. The reader needs to keep in mind of the style of the times to really enjoy them. Recommended.