Above you see a Mitchell Hooks cover for the 1951 Robert Standish novel Storm Centre, and yes, from the art alone you can see that once again we’ve taken the plunge into tropical island fiction. It’s impossible for us to resist the stuff. This one is about what happens when a devastatingly beautiful woman named Diana Maynard shows up at an isolated British plantation community in Malaysia. Everyone immediately covets her, particularly John and Adrian, friends and business partners who turn against each other. Even the local orangutan Jimmie is driven to distraction, theoretically because he senses something “primal” in Diana.
The consequences of all this lust are serious. An eye is lost. A skull is fractured. A face disfigured. A suicide completed. It’s an interesting story in that there are no villains at first, but rather good people acting increasingly out of character due to obsession. Diana, the titular “storm centre”, is up front from the beginning about not wanting any of the men. Well, until a charming rogue of a Frenchman turns her head. Storm Centre is a surprisingly forward-looking tale by Standish about male toxicity and aggressive attitudes toward beauty. Because he’s writing about women to depths that seem a bit beyond him, the story may not ring entirely true for some. But it certainly rings.
