We dropped by the post office to retrieve this copy of Conrad Dawn’s 1960 novel Chartered Love accompanied by one of our more literary friends, and when he saw the cover this reader of Vonnegut and Voltaire said, “This looks great!” He meant ridiculous and fun, which was our hope when we ordered it. The uncredited art is both, with its foreground figure holding a pistol in his teeth, yet behind his shoulder in a way that stretches the limits of human physiology. We couldn’t attempt this with a gun because we don’t own one, but we tried it with a dagger we picked up* during a jungle foray in Central America and succeeded in getting the hilt into a similar position as above—though very awkwardly. Therefore, this is objectively a weird painting. We suppose cheapo publishing house Novel Books had to take what they could get.
The book is about a Macao based boat captain named John Darrow who’s hired by beautiful Elizabeth McClain to locate twelve million dollars worth of gold bars that sank in 1938 with a torpedoed ship in the Sulu Sea. Naturally, others have heard about the treasure, most importantly a ruthless pirate named Suto Hayama who travels in a speedy junk and remains on Darrow’s trail throughout the novel. The story leads readers through the expected nautical cat and mouse between ships, tropical typhoon, hairsbreadth salvage operation, and seaborne showdown between protagonists and pirates.
Chartered Love is a deceptive title. The book’s only sex is of the fade-to-black variety. It’s mainly an action tale, and as such it basically works. Authors often focus on a specific aspect of a trade or culture to provide verisimilitude. Dawn chose decompression. Depending on how deep a scuba diver descends and for how long, they need to pause while ascending from the depths in order to avoid the bends—the condition arising from the increase then decrease of pressure on the body that causes dissolved gases to emerge as microbubbles inside body tissues. It’s debilitatingly painful, and sometimes deadly.
Decompression stops can last for hours, which in this case is managed thanks to support personnel lowering fresh oxygen tanks. A couple of times Darrow is literally stuck waiting below while crucial events take place topside. It’s a nice ticking clock device. We suspect Dawn took it from earlier novels, but fine—action literature is built on borrowed ideas. Chartered Love isn’t written at a high level, but the decompression gimmick adds interest and elevates the realism of the narrative. If you find the book for a few dollars, it’s worth buying for a quick and fun read.
*Actually, we didn’t pick it up. PI-1 did. Always thinking of others in her lovely way, she traded a Mickey Mouse watch for it and gave it to PSGP as a gift.
