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ASSAULT ON A QUEEN by Jack Finney

ASSAULT ON A QUEEN

By

Pub Date: Aug. 24th, 1959
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

If crime is in any way justified by its outrageous audacity, the twentieth century version of the great train robbery finds ample justification. Staged by six somewhat desperate people, this is the story of a robbery, engineered from Fire Island, New York on the Queen Mary. Using as their device a salvaged World War I submarine, the crew equip themselves and proceed to launch on a crime, that were it to succeed, would win them all a vast fortune. The plan, however, does not altogether materialize because at the last moment the hero is overcome with conscience, but not until the most daring part of the crime is enacted. Written by the author of Five Against the House, the magnitude of the plot's conception is in no way supported by the scope of Jack Finney's imagination. And so despite infinite detail on the technical problems involved in such a venture, the assult seems to be on the reader's credulousness rather than on the unlucky British vessel.