Customer Reviews

Scorpion Reef

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Scorpion Reef by Charles Williams can best be described as an action-adventure novel that takes place in and around the Gulf of Mexico. The protagonist is Bill Manning, a seafarin' man with a sensitive soul. Bill's life undergoes an abrupt and profound transformation when a beautiful, statuesque blond named Shannon Macaulay enters his world.

Bill and Shannon find themselves caught up in a nasty struggle with some very bad men over sunken treasure located off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula. Using a very descriptive and detailed writing style, Williams successfully spins an engaging tale of mystery, romance and danger against the backdrop of the open sea. And the ending is a really great one.

My only complaint about this otherwise genuinely appealing book, is the overly convoluted, highly improbable backstory used to set up the narrative's underlying conflict.

Scorpion Reef is a flawed but still highly entertaining work of fiction. Well worth reading.

Scorpion Reef is an out-of-print paperback original published by the late (and sadly much neglected) pulp master Charles Williams. Originally published in 1955 under the title Gulf Coast Girl, it was the first of Williams's novels to make the sea front and center to his story. Williams is probably best known for Dead Calm, which was made into a modestly successful film that featured Nicole Kidman in her debut performance.

Scorpion Reef is typical of Williams's early work in that it features a hapless protagonist (Bill Manning) who gets drawn in by a powerful and alluring woman (Shannon McCaulay) who consistently lies to him about her motives. The story basically centers on the build up to a search for a wrecked plane that apparently contains a stash of stolen diamonds. The plane crashed in the Gulf of Mexico, and the woman solicits Manning to help her and her husband navigate a boat to the crash site in order to dive for them.

Too much of the novel (nearly the whole first half), though, is on land and functions merely as a build up to the seaquest. Only, when the seaquest finally gets underway, the story races to an anti-climatic ending that I found unsatisfying. Compare this to Dead Calm, which begins at sea and immediately moves into a suspenseful plot. Or Aground, for that matter, which takes place largely at sea.

Further complicating matters, Manning is not a terribly sympathetic character. At times he seems dim-witted and completely sees Shannon as a piece of meat. And Shannon basically lies and connives her way through the whole story.

Again, if you compare this with Dead Calm, you'll see a much different character portrayal. The couple in Dead Calm are in love with one another, have a terrific sense of humor, and cannot bear the thought of life without one another. And so when they are separated by a maniac, you care much more for them. With Scorpion Reef, on the other hand, none of the characters are particularly sympathetic and so when bad things happen to them, you really don't care.

So, I would definitely recommend starting with Dead Calm first, then read Aground, before moving on to Scorpion Reef.

All that said, these novels clearly had a direct impact on pulp master John D. MacDonald, who in turn had an enormous influence on Stephen King. So you could make the argument that Charles Williams set into motion the kinds of suspense fiction which came to dominate much of the late 20th century. And in Scorpion Reef, you see an early Williams beginning to plot his course toward the more mature works he's best remembered for today.

The line above is at the center of the mystery in Charles Williams' novel Scorpion Reef. In Scorpion Reef, a the crew of a ship in the Gulf of Mexico comes upon a drifting yacht. There is no sign of the people who were on the yacht. The searchers find only the ship's log book which contains the mysterious lines that I have quoted above.

Scorpion Reef is a rarity - a truly original mystery. First published under the title Gulf Coast Girl in 1955, the book centers on a down-and-out man named Bill Manning who lives in a fictional Gulf Coast town. He's recently gone through a divorce and lost his beloved yacht. A chance at redemption arrives in the form of a beautiful woman - Shannon Wayne - who wants him to search for a lost treasure. But Bill soon learns that Shannon hasn't told him the entire truth about the treasure - and that she's far from the only one interested in the money.

Williams was a talented writer. For a mystery novel, Scorpion Reef spends a lot of time on character development. Also, Scorpion Reef contains many unexpected plot twists and lots of action that keep the reader interested. Another positive is that Williams - who spent ten years in the Merchant Marine - uses of his knowledge of the sea; the Gulf of Mexico feels like one of the book's major characters.

Though I like the book, it's not perfect. The story is far from believable, so readers have to take it simply as entertainment. Moreover, as in most mysteries, the mystery itself is more interesting than is the author's solution to the mystery.

Still, I really liked Scorpion Reef. It's a good, quick read (190 pages) with plenty of action and adventure in an exotic setting.