South by Java Head

Author : Alistair MacLean

South by Java Head is a novel written by Scottish author Alistair MacLean, and was first published in 1958. MacLean's personal experiences in the Royal Navy during World War II provided part of the basis for the story.

Set in Battle of Singapore in February 1942, just as the burning city of Singapore is about to fall to the Imperial Japanese Army, a tramp steamer slips out of the harbor into the South China Sea containing a desperate and disparate group of people, each with a secret for which they are willing to kill in order to keep safe. The Japanese are the villains, of course, the novel being set in World War II, and the protagonists are a group of mixed civilians and English military personnel: a dissolute Englishman, an elegant Dutch planter, a strangely beautiful Eurasian girl, a Malay slave trader and a mysterious man named Nicholson who is never without his gun. As with any MacLean novel, no one is exactly who they initially seem to be, and the story is filled with secret documents, double agents, traitors, and romantic subplots, not to mention repeated attacks from the Japanese.