FORGOTTEN THRILLERS: ASCENT OF D.13 by ANDREW GARVE

I recently read and enjoyed Andrew Garve’s crime novel Frame-Up, which inspired me to re-read his spy novel The Ascent Of D.13 (1969), the details of which had largely escaped my memory.

I borrowed a copy of The Ascent Of D.13 off a friend, before finding a copy for myself on line (below).

The story is quite straight forward. The Russians hijack a British plane which is carrying experimental secret equipment that “maybe change the whole course of warfare”. The plane crashes in mountainous terrain on the international border between Russia and Turkey. The plane and its cargo is stranded high on a mountain peak about 13,000 feet above sea level, and is shrouded in fog, snow and blizzards, making an aerial retrieval of the equipment impossible. Fortunately for the Allies, renowned British mountain climber and writer Bill Royce is in Istanbul on his way to India for a season of climbing there. Under pressure from the Ambassador, he and an American CIA agent agree to climb the mountain known as D.13 and retrieve or destroy the secret equipment. In meantime the Russians also dispatch their own team of climbers to reach the plane first.

As the blurb on the Book Flap says: “Nothing more can be said about this ingenious plot without spoiling the reader’s enjoyment”, and I won’t!

The novel moves at a crisp pace and really excels in its depiction of the dangers of the climb. As with Alistair MacLean and Hammond Innes, Garve is very good at making the reader feel the cold and the harshness of the terrain that Royce and others have traverse. The climbing detail is impressive and is seamlessly woven into the story.

Royce is a solid hero typical of British thrillers of the time, although he is overly prone to giving lectures about the evils of Communism, which apparently reflects the author’s own experiences. The story does move in unexpected directions, but after an incident filled descent it fades a bit towards the end and the conclusion is a little corny.

The pluses of the novel are very much the vivid climbing descriptions and the briskly flowing story, which is helped by the book’s length of less than 200 easy to read pages. On the other hand, Garve, like other thriller writers of the time, is not good at creating credible relationships and this lets the story down a bit. In all, I enjoyed it and I am looking forward to reading other Andrew Garve books this year, probably starting with A Hero For Leanda.

By the way, I quite like the Thriller Book Club cover of the book below, although the uniform and the Red Star makes the character in the background look more Chinese than Russian.

Here is a link to my review of Garve’s Frame-up, which is a very style of book to The Ascent Of D.13: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/forgotten-crime-frame-up-by-andrew-garve-1964/