Gavin Lyall · 1963 · thriller

Gavin Lyall's 1963 thriller. Bill Cary flies a battered Beaver on floats around Finnish Lapland, ferrying mineral prospectors into lakes north of the Arctic Circle and making just enough to keep the aircraft airworthy. A hunting client with the wrong sort of questions, a Soviet border a few miles east and an old wartime debt turn the season into something considerably worse.

1. 1
   Helsinki

   The season's contracts are argued over in Helsinki, where mineral companies hire aircraft by the hour and a pilot with an ageing floatplane and a wartime record takes what work he can get.

2. 2
   Rovaniemi

   North to Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle, where the prospecting parties are outfitted - and where a client turns up wanting to be flown out to hunt, asking questions about the country nearer the frontier.

3. 3
   Ivalo

   Beyond Ivalo the lakes and forest run east to a border that means something, and Cary is caught in the middle of an old score being settled - out of radio range, in country where a wrecked aircraft is never found.