The Night Boat
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A scuba diver unearths a sunken U-boat that holds a terrible secret Robert Moore had a cushy life in Baltimore. The son of a bank president, he could have had the old man’s job if he’d just waited in line. But Moore isn’t the patient type, and rather than spend his life trapped behind a desk, he decamped for the Caribbean, to pass his days diving beneath the perfect blue sea. One day, diving deeper than usual, he spies a sunken ship. His investigations disrupt an unexploded depth charge, which hurls Robert to the surface with the sunken ship not far behind. The U-boat, still seaworthy after all these decades, drifts towards the island and gets caught on the reef. A strange knocking echoes from inside the hull, as though something within is still alive. When Robert opens the long-closed hatch, he’ll learn that some sunken treasure is better left undisturbed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While collectors will appreciate this reissue of bestselling horror legend McCammon's third novel (published in 1980), it doesn't offer much for the casual genre fan. During WWII, Allied sub chasers sink a Nazi U-boat that's been terrorizing Caribbean naval shipyards. Forty years later, widower David Moore unintentionally sets off an explosive depth charge off the coast of the Caribbean island Coquina, causing the U-boat to resurface along with memories of the devastation it once caused. Voodoo priest Reverend Boniface demands its destruction. Steven Kip, the island's constable, waves off Boniface's warnings as old history and superstition, but the boat causes a compulsion on those who come near; there's a persistent banging from within its hull; and as the death toll mounts, the survivors are forced to confront both their own histories and the island's haunting, horrifying past. Though there are some vividly visceral scenes, the story is marred by obvious twists, an excess of characters, and initially promising story lines that fizzle before a rushed, anticlimactic ending.
