Hammond Innes · 1971 · sea

Hammond Innes's 1971 novel. Paul van der Voort comes home to Amsterdam on the run and finds his archaeologist father gone - vanished into the Greek islands chasing a theory about the origins of European man. Working a passage through the Mediterranean, Paul follows him to Levkas and the caves of Meganisi, and to what his father has done to prove himself right.

1. 1
   Amsterdam

   Paul van der Voort comes back to Amsterdam a wanted man and finds his adoptive father's house empty - the old palaeontologist gone to Greece on an expedition, chasing his unfashionable theory about where modern man began.

2. 2
   Malta

   To get out of the Netherlands he takes work with a smuggler running illicit antiquities, and the boat carries him down to Malta - the first leg of a passage that suits both his employers' business and his own search.

3. 3
   Levkas

   In the Ionian at Levkas he picks up his father's trail among the diggings and the jealousies of rival archaeologists, and learns that the old man has quarrelled with everyone and gone off alone into the islands.

4. 4
   Meganisi

   On Meganisi, in a flooded cave beneath the rock, Paul dives into the dark to find him - and finds the painted walls his father sought, the proof he would not share, and the thing he did to keep it.