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The Doomed Oasis
The Doomed Oasis
The Doomed Oasis
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The Doomed Oasis

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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A sweeping adventure set in the Arabian Desert, where the shadow of British colonialism threatens to destroy a father and son.

Three years ago, nineteen-year-old David Thomas beat his father to death. Actually, David only punched the old man, but it was hard enough to cause him to have a fatal stroke. And the man wasn’t really David’s father at all: The fight started because David learned that his true father was Col. Charles Stanley Whitaker, a legendary figure who made his fortune in the oil fields of the Arabian Desert.
 
With the help of George Grant, a lawyer he’d just met, David escaped the police and set out to find his real father. But like so many travelers before him, he was swallowed by the desert and never seen again . . .
 
Now, Grant is working for Colonel Whitaker, helping him negotiate the tangled politics of the turbulent Middle East. When he begins asking questions about the circumstances of David’s disappearance, he will be forced to confront the nightmare at the heart of the British Empire.
 
A globe-trotting adventure with the sweep of Lawrence of Arabia, The Doomed Oasis is a thrilling political novel, one of the finest ever written by the legendary Hammond Innes.
 
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 15, 2016
ISBN9781504040983
The Doomed Oasis
Author

Hammond Innes

Hammond Innes (1913–1998) was the British author of over thirty novels, as well as children’s and travel books. Born Ralph Hammond Innes in Horsham, Sussex, he was educated at the Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist at the Financial News. The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. Innes served in the Royal Artillery in World War II, eventually rising to the rank of major. A number of his books were published during the war, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1940), and Attack Alarm (1941), which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain. Following his demobilization in 1946, Innes worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for their fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of place, such as Air Bridge (1951), which is set at RAF stations during the Berlin Airlift. Innes’s protagonists were often not heroes in the typical sense, but ordinary men suddenly thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. Often, this involved being placed in a hostile environment—for example, the Arctic, the open sea, deserts—or unwittingly becoming involved in a larger conflict or conspiracy. Innes’s protagonists are forced to rely on their own wits rather than the weapons and gadgetry commonly used by thriller writers. An experienced yachtsman, his great love and understanding of the sea was reflected in many of his novels. Innes went on to produce books on a regular schedule of six months for travel and research followed by six months of writing. He continued to write until just before his death, his final novel being Delta Connection (1996). At his death, he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations to enable others to experience sailing in the element he loved.

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Rating: 3.7903225806451615 out of 5 stars
4/5

31 ratings6 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I thoroughly enjoyed this - reminded me a bit of Shute's Trustee from the Toolroom - in a good way !

    Explores the impact of oil & water resources on communities, of military, business, political and journalistic expectations and manages to be a good story at the same time !
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was pleasantly surprised with this book. I was expecting something in the lines of “white-man-bad,” but this is a book about human beings and their actions, race, thankfully, not being involved. Mr. Innes’ descriptions of desert hardships are so vivid I once took my eyes off the pages and looked through my window to see tree branches covered with snow and it took me a few seconds to realize where I was! His narration is THAT good. Lots of twists and turns and a surprising end. I am looking forward to his other books.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A return to one of the staple authors of my youth, and I don't recall reading this work before. What a revelation! Nowadays I mostly read science fiction or popular science, and with both of those genres good writing is scarce. With The Doomed Oasis I am treated to excellent literature. The story starts in Cardiff and moves to Arabia in the days when the West is starting to exploit the oil beneath the sands. A solicitor becomes linked to a family, and the story traces his interactions with a mother, estranged father and their twins. The focus is on the relationship between the father and son, or more accurately on the relationship between the father, son and their shared passion for the area of Arabia where they settle. I'm particularly interested in the picture it gives of the early oil industry (post-war period) in the region. The quality of the writing is outstanding, and is five-star, so perhaps I'm being harsh with assigning only four-and-a-half stars; if this had been one of his maritime novels then I'm sure I wouldn't have begrudged that extra nudge to give it top marks.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quintessential Hammond Innes: adventure in the Bahrain area with forays into the desert and amongst the Bedu. The hero is a staid British lawyer, trying to manage an impossible assignment related to a youth in search of his father, an Englishman gone native. The Middle Eastern culture was portrayed fairly well with some atmospheric passages of Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter, Saudia). The situation around oil explorations of the '60's era set an exciting suspense.Although this is not a tale of espionage, the older style story will appeal if you like vintage tales by Nevil Shute, Eric Ambler and Desmond Bagley.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Idealistic young man heads to the Middle East to find the father he's never met, the man who never acknowledged him or his sister. There's enough description of oil companies and local culture to give this story a feel of authenticity and keep the reader interested.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    British oil exploration and tribal rivalries in 1950s Arabia make for a rousing adventure.

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The Doomed Oasis - Hammond Innes

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