Reading High Stand right after finishing Golden Soak, I can't help but compare these two stories rooted in gold mining, although High Stand also spends half its pages dealing with the timber industry and drug smuggling. Golden Soak took place in the desolate Australian outback, its story told through a maddeningly stupid narrator and protagonist. High Stand is the exact opposite, unfolding in the frozen, wet Yukon and British Columbia. Its narrator, Philip Redfern, is a more neutral as well as nuanced character. In fact, I doubt that his name is mentioned more than four or five times in the novel. And his participation in the action is gradual, too. Only in the end does the reader realize the length of the trail traveled and eye opening reality about corruption, violence, and greed the heretofore naive Philip had never experienced.

The first half of the book takes the reader to Ice Cold, the worked out gold mine Philip's client is desperately trying to turn into a new opportunity. That part of the book is vivid, detailed. Redfern's trip from England to Western Canada becomes something that is a shared revelation with the reader.

The second half of the novel moves from the gold mine to a stand of red cedars that the grandfather of Tom Halliday, Redfern's client, had planted seventy years before. Forget their role in the plot. What is remarkable is that the distinct vividness of the earlier passages disappears into a description of rivers, forests, and waterfalls that are a blur across the landscape and seem to go on forever. Innes' focus replaces scenery with action. The tale shifts into high gear, integrating a vast drug smuggling ring into the story. None of this is as preposterous as it sounds in describing it. Innes actually makes it all work.

Finally, a note about conservation. I don't think Innes was anything like an environmentalist in today's sense of the word. He was more of a conservationist. And the fact is that he makes a strong case for conservation in this work. Only once does it seem didactic and hamfisted--with the story about Canadian beavers' near extinction bringing on an environmental catastrophe. For the most part, Innes is still too good of a storyteller even at this late stage of his career to indulge in being preachy at the expense of the overall story. ( )

Match found in the German National Library.