Came The Dawn

by Roger Bax

Assigned to Russia during the Second World War, Philip Sutherland falls in love with, and marries, Marya, a ballet dancer. When it comes time for him to return to England, the Soviet Government refuses permission for Marya to join him and Philip decides to take matters into his own hands.

His first move is to buy the ten-ton auxiliary yacht Dawn. His second, to persuade Jack Denny, whose Russian wife, Svetlana, is also unable to leave Russia, to join forces with him. They plan to sail to Tallinn, in Esthonia, and there smuggle the two women aboard. Their friend Steve Quillan, an American radio correspondent in Moscow, promises valuable help.

Came The Dawn is a gripping piece of writing in which two men are willing to risk everything in order to be reunited with those they love.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

AKA: Andrew Garve, Paul Somers

Roger Bax was the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001), who also wrote as Andrew Garve and Paul Somers. He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He was noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – including Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

Paul Winterton was a founding member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.

Reviews

[Victor]

Another solid adventure from Andrew Garve. A genuine page turner with very little of modern darkness . I have not yet read any book by him that I did not like .For those who like Canning and Ambler ..Garve should be a good surprise . The books are somewhat slimmer and written very lucidly and always has variety of plots with twists .While this one is not as breakneck as Ashes of Loda or twisty like a hero for Leanda , it was still a very absorbing read .I wonder why he is not reprinted .The only books in print are so exorbitantly priced in India that they are untouchable .

[Creolecat]

Never Let Me Go (1953)

[Sim]

Paul Winterton aka Roger Bax (who also wrote under other names, including Andrew Garve) was a post WW2 writer of crime fiction and thrillers. In his early career Winterton worked as a correspondent for The Economist and other publications, which included a stint in Russia. He seems to have been one of those bright grammar school boys like Victor Canning who found a solid niche writing intelligent, observant but non-angsty page-turners in the mid twentieth century. They came from outside Oxbridge literary circles, were politically somewhere in the sensible middle and very open to the world, including the natural world. Well, so it seems to me, and this comes through in their books I think.

This rollicking thriller written in 1949 draws on the Russian experience. The main protagonist, Phillip, is an English journalist in Russia during the war, at which time Russia was an ally against Germany.

He marries a Russian woman, as does one of his friends. When it’s time to return to England the iron curtain is descending and the wives aren’t given exit permits so the forlorn husbands leave on their own.

Then Phillip comes up with a plan to sail through the Baltic in a pleasure yacht and get the women out.

There are good descriptions of the sailing and navigation through the Baltic (especially the canals of Sweden, and the Finnish Islands). There are interesting observations on Russian life under Stalin as the USSR turns inwards and backwards and the way Russia treated the eastern Bsltic as its private lake.

Quite poignant really because it feels like those behaviours are coming back, 75 years on.

I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read by this author under his various names.