Nov. 19/2025: Speaking of Tom Cunliffe, here’s a bit of serendipitous coincidence. Both he and Clare Allcard, who met for the first time back in 2016 in Andorra, when I met Clare for the first time, have published new books just about simultaneously. Except Tom’s book is a novel, his very first. And just as Clare first started putting together her new memoir, From the Devil to the Deep Blue Sea, back in the 1990s, Tom first started baking his new novel, Hurricane Force, way back in the 1970s.
I’d known Tom for a good bit, in various capacities, well before we met Clare together in 2016. He is, among other things, a first-rate raconteur, with a distinctive style, a talent for apt description, and an engaging tone that translates very well to fiction. ‘Tis a shame he didn’t share this book with us earlier!
It is a rollicking good read—a very nautical tale, of course, recounting the adventures of a singlehander, ex-merchant mariner Ian Hordle, whose vintage lugger Dream of Olwen nearly sinks from under him en route from the Canary Islands to Martinique. Hordle lands on the tiny fictional island of Rogation (just west of Martinique, in case you’re wondering) hoping to get his old wood boat hauled and repaired by some old-school boatwrights with the quickness.
Beyond Tom’s narrational voice, what’s charming about the book is that it’s set at the end of the “before” times, in the 1970s, when it was still possible for islanders in the West Indies to make an honest living on the water, fishing or running cargo aboard traditional schooners under sail. As such, it called to mind one of my favorite books on Caribbean culture and boatbuilding, A Clean Sweet Wind.
Tom and his wife Roz, back in the good old days, when they cruised far and wide on a vintage wooden boat of their own
The plot of the story is very much wrapped around how the islands have been forced to adapt to our modern world. For instead of getting his boat fixed and sailing on for Panama, our hero Hordle is instead embroiled in a complex bit of tourist-dollar corporate skullduggery and political corruption, with some eco-vandalism, underworld crime, and (of course) a bit of smoldering romance thrown in for good measure. The dramatic denouement (no surprise, given the title) features a big dose of very bad weather.
Tom juggles all these elements like a true master and kept me compulsively turning pages until I reached the last one. So please buy this book! He needs to be encouraged, so he will hopefully write another one.
You can score your own copy here.
Hurricane Force
By Tom Cunliffe
BAA Publishing (2025)
272 pp.
