When we lived in Central America there were three volcanoes that loomed over our town. One’s slope commenced just a few miles away and its peak dominated the sky to the south, but that one was extinct. The other two were not. One was dormant, but the other was active and smoked nonstop, with the prevailing wind carrying the ash away from town. This mountain occasionally shot out fountains of lava hundreds of feet high, which is a sight that will make you realize how insignificant you are the same way seeing a tornado or massive wave will. These mountains stood sentinel over many of our adventures, and were even involved in a few, including the time we visited a village on the extinct volcano and a mob of about thirty people beat a suspected thief to death.
Another time the top of that volcano started glowing red one night when we were hanging out at one of the local bars. We stood in the street with our drinks watching this spectacle, and pretty soon we could see flames around the mountain’s peak. We thought we were seriously screwed. It was always understood that if that dead volcano ever came back to life there was nothing to do but kiss your ass goodbye. We decided to redouble our drinking. It turned out the flames were caused by a forest fire way up by the rim, but we gotta tell you, in those moments when we thought we might be toast, we got very efficiently hammered. It’s a great memory, standing in that cobbled colonial lane, guzzling booze and waiting for the mountain to blow us all to hell.
Needless to say, for that reason the cover of 1952’s The Angry Mountain by Hammond Innes sold us. The art is by Mitchell Hooks and it’s close to his best work, we think. We didn’t need to know anything about the book. We just wanted to see how the author used a volcano—specifically Vesuvius—in his tale, since they’re a subject personal to us. The cover scene does occur in the narrative, though the couple involved aren’t actually trying to have sex. Innes describes this lava lit encounter well. In fact we’d say it’s described beyond the ability of even an artist as good as Hooks to capture, but that doesn’t mean the book is top notch. Innes simply manages to make the most of his central gimmick.
The narrative deals with a man named Farrell who was tortured during World War II, losing his leg to a fascist doctor who amputated without anesthesia. A handful of years later Farrell is in Europe again, getting around on a prosthetic leg, when a series of events leads to him believing the doctor who tortured him is alive and living under a false identity. In trying to unravel this mystery he travels from Czechoslovakia, to Milan, to Naples, and finally to a villa at the foot of Vesuvius, along the way being pursued but having no idea why. He soon comes to understand that he’s thought to be hiding or carrying something. But what? Why? And where? Where could he be carrying something valuable without his knowledge? Well, there’s that hollow leg of his he let get out of his sight one night when he got blackout drunk…
That was a spoiler but since you probably don’t have a volcano fetish you aren’t going to seek out this novel, right? The main flaw with The Angry Mountain is that, ironically, there’s not much heat. Farrell is an alcoholic and has PTSD, so he’s not an easy protagonist to get behind. And his confusion about what’s happening gives the first-person narrative the feel of going around in circles much of the time. And because this is a 1950s thriller, there’s the mandatory love interest—or actually two—and that feels unrealistic when you’re talking about a one-legged boozehound who has nightmares, cold sweats, and general stability problems. So the book, while evocative, is only partly successful. But those volcano scenes. We sure loved those.
