Hammond Innes · 1974 · sea
Hammond Innes's 1974 thriller. Michael Randall comes back to Shetland with a trawler, a bad record and a past in radical politics he cannot shake off. As the oil boom transforms the islands, he finds himself suspected of a plot to blow up a North Sea rig - and has to go out to the platform himself to find out who is really doing it.
- 1Aberdeen
At Aberdeen, the boom town of the North Sea oil rush, Michael Randall takes on a trawler and a mountain of debt, trying to leave behind a past of union agitation that the security men have not forgotten.
- 2Lerwick
He works north to Lerwick in Shetland, where the islands are being remade by oil money and old crofting communities look on with suspicion - and where Randall's own history makes him the obvious man to blame.
- 3Sullom Voe
At the great terminal being carved out at Sullom Voe, with pipelines coming ashore and construction camps everywhere, the rumour of sabotage hardens into intelligence, and Randall finds himself the prime suspect.
- 4The North Sea
Out on the rig itself in a rising sea, Randall goes looking for the men who really mean to blow it - a search through steel and storm where being wrong once will kill everyone aboard.