Landslide by Desmond Bagley
Desmond Bagley's Landslide is a novel that offers an immense variety of interesting plots and angles that keep the reader engrossed right through the tale. Bob Boyd, a geologist, suffers from amnesia but finds a mystical sort of connection with the land he is surveying for the Matterson Corporation and its people, especially Claire Trinivant. As the story unfolds, the reader is gripped by not just the suspense of Bob's mysterious past but by the fact that Bob faces dealing with the corrupt Matterson family who are determined to build a dam on the land being surveyed despite Bob's warnings of the unstable nature of the terrain. Bob's problems are compounded by his romantic involvement with both Claire Trinivant, the owner of the land under survey and with whose family the Matterson's have an ongoing family feud, as well as Howard's sister, Lucy.
Bagley adds even more suspense and drama to Landslide through revealing that Bob may well have been one of the three men killed in a car crash, which a local journalist, Mac, suspects as the dastardly ploy of Bull Matterson in order to get rid of his partner John Trinivant and Trinivant's son, Frank. The third person killed in the unfortunate crash was a mysterious hitchhiker, Robert Grant. Bob begins to believe that the car accident that caused his amnesia may well have been the same one that caused the death of the Trinivant men and he determines to find out his true past identity.
Eventually, Bob comes to believe that he is Claire's husband Frank and the story comes to a dramatic climax with Howard and Lucy embarking on a revengeful manhunt to kill Bob, Bull Matterson suffering a heart attack on realizing that Frank had survived and confessing to his crime. The real master touch, however, comes in the form of a landslide engulfing the town, which kills Howard as a fitting, almost divine justice for his own crimes. Of course, like all classic adventure stories, there is a hint of another happy ending with Bob/Frank managing to rescue Claire.
Bibliography
Bagley, Desmond. "Landslide." House of Stratus. September 2002.
