I discovered this book by checking out the credits for the 1989 movie of the same name. While the movie was OK in a pulpy horror clicheed way and memorable only for the occasional glimpse of Nicole Kidman in deshabille, I remembered the claustrophobic menace of being stranded on a very small ship in the company of a madman. The original novel has this tension in spades, and as a bonus I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing and the careful exploration of character motivations.John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon and have chosen to spend it crossing the Pacific Ocean in their small sailboat Saracen . Caught in the windless, stifling equatorial latitudes, they come upon a stranded vessel and pick up a lone man fleeing what he claims to be a sinking ship and an extreme case of food poisoning that has killed his three sailing mates. The twist is soon deployed as John goes to investigate the accident of the second ship ( Orpheus ) and the young man runs away with Rae and the Saracen .More than anything else the premise reminds me of Hitchcock, something to be expected for a novel published in 1963. The isolation of his actors from the outside world, the hints at imminent danger and the threat of physical violence, the ambiguity about the main character's sanity and the layman attempt at psychoanalysis are all trademarks of the master of suspense. Hughie Warriner - the young man with debilitating phobias about drowning, volatile temperament and repressed memories of a bullying father and a smothering mother - is for me based clearly on Norman Bates and I kept imagining him played by Anthony Perkins rather than Billy Zane.Two major differences exist between the book and the movie, and I prefer Charles Williams treatment in both. First: on the stranded ship John meets the surviving two members of the crew and finds out how dangerous Hughie really is. The dynamics between the original two couples on the Orpheus - the Warriners and the Bellews - are subtle, captivating and credible compared with the insane serial killer Hollywood staple. I'm not getting into details, I'll only put this quote as a teaser: Human beings confined in too small an area were apparently subject to the same laws regarding molecular friction and the generation of heat as gases under compression Second: even more interesting to follow are the mind games and the rational analysis of the situation by Rae as she is struggling to wrest control of the Saracen from the paranoid Hughie. Beside the edge of the seat tension and the explosive moments of action, I liked Rae better than any other character in the book for her level headed response when faced with extreme danger, her refusal to accept defeat and her moral scruples. Taking another man's life is a not an endeavour to be undertaken casually or flippantly, and Williams was more convincing in showing her mental processes than in his amateur psychoanalysis of Hugghie motivations. One more point in favor of the book over the movie is (view spoiler)[ the absence of the gratuitous rape scene (hide spoiler)]
