This is a South African type thriller, set along the southwest coast of Africa in the 60's or so, in the desert called the Namib. It is a story partly about early diamond explorers, and a underground river that supposedly brought millions of diamonds from inland to the Nabian coastal beaches and off shore areas. The thriller aspect is about a fictional underground lake that contains most of the diamonds but is protected by some sort of natural and fatal protection. All people who have attempted to find out extract diamonds from the sea, by offshore ship vacumming, submarines and other methods are killed in horrible and fatally unexplained accidents. One old prospector and a young surveyor and his girl friend are caught in the mystery and its solution. This novel is based upon the unproven sea diamond theory and it is not unitl the late 1990's that vacuuming diammonds from the ocean bottom near the Namib coast proved to be true and profitable. Geoffry Jenkins has written a hard bitten novel, a mixture of great sea adventure and extreme desert survivor tale mixed with the history of diamonds and Africa. It is a good story. I understand a movie was made in 1990 but was a third rate B movie. It would be worth releasing this book and the story is a tale of high adventure. This is one of several adventure tales by Jenkins and I think that it was his best.

"Hunter Killer" tells the story of how two RN war heroes manage to perfect and launch a new and potentially revolutionary form of rocket engine. Actually, the narrator is along for the ride - reluctantly - as the US navy closes in on them. It seems that the inventor and expected passenger of the missile also happens to be the vice-president of the United States. When the president falls ill, the US engages in a mad rush to locate the missile's inventor and prevent the launch of the new rocket. The narrator's friend, a fellow vet from the RN's submarine service, isn't about to see his hard work hit any snag - so he commandeers the rocket and shanghais the inventor and the narrator, and has his crew run about the Indian Ocean hoping he can set a good launch site for the missile before the Americans catch up.

This story was a bit of a dissappointment - the author gets all the geography right and makes sure that the cuisine enhances the flavor, but the plot itself seems underdone. The mad-race to launch the missile and elude the Americans seems over the top. Also, the cold war pressures seem completely missing, though you'd think they'd have much to do with the development of the nifty rocket. The biggest disspointment was how the book passed itself off as a submarine thriller, but our heroes leave the submarine fairly quickly and don't exactly exchange it for anything as fun. The "Hunter Killer" of the title may refer to the hero, who was a hunter killer of ships and crews in the war, but seems pressed to do more than just escape his pursuers now.