BIMINI RUN

In the hands of a Hemingway this might have been an exciting short story. Expanded to a brief novel, in less skilled hands, it seems melodrama, rather cheap and tawdry. Four stock characters,- a Norwegian Captain who charters his deep-sea fishing boat to a vulgarly rich man and the wife who married him ""for all the things she had never had"" and a handsome veteran, ex-gambler-bar-tender, out of Stamford via the Pacific war, who is persuaded to sign on for the cruise as cook-bar-tender and working guest. The V.R.M. is out to break the sailfish-manta- marlin record off Miami. His wife is out to get the ex- bartender; the captain wants only to bring his boat back to shore; Hank wants to steer clear of entangling alliances, and make enough money to get back to Reno's gambling rooms. The captain and the husband nurture smouldering hate, and it comes into violent combat while the boat is lashed to a huge manta, and sharks pursue. Hank and the wife shoot to keep off the sharks; the captain and the husband go into personal battle and fall overboard. Hank does all he can to save them, while the wife's gun is silenced, open acceptance of the sacrifice of an innocent man to her desire to be rid of her husband. On this gory note the story ends. What happens to the woman and the handsome Hank is anyone's guess but I for one don't care...Too bad that a man who can write as poignantly as Hunt did in East of Farewell should be satisfied with this sort of stuff.