Bay of Souls, by Robert Stone

An unquiet American loses his bearings

Other writers may earn higher advances, but Robert Stone is considered by many the finest American novelist at work today, with a body of work far more accomplished than many better-known names. This slim but ambitious new novel is similar to his masterpiece, A Flag for Sunrise, in that it functions both as a multi-layered work of literature and a compulsive thriller. If it seems a slighter work than that book, that may be because Stone has aimed at a lean, stripped-down structure for Bay of Souls.

Michael Ahearn is a loving father, none-too-devoted husband and professor at a mediocre college. Lara Purcell, meanwhile, is an expert in third-world politics, recently arrived on campus from the Caribbean. Michael finds himself drawn to her, his obsession fuelled by mutual attraction and spiralling into frantic passion. When Lara flees to her native island of St Trinity, Michael follows, closing his eyes to the political upheaval there.

Stone's story (a naive academic embroiled with third-world corruption, threatening drug-dealers and duplicitous expats) allows him again to synthesise the most resonant themes of writers such as Graham Greene with his own world-view. In fact, the shade of Greene, our most distinguished Catholic writer, haunts the pages of Bay of Souls, with its notions of spiritual redemption and crises of conscience stirred into a rich goulash.

The heroine Lara (a tad under-characterised, unlike most of Stone's richly-drawn women characters) undergoes a rather sudden descent into mental confusion when a phantasmagorical attempt to commune with the soul of her dead brother goes messily awry. But this strand is clearly of less concern to Stone than the jettisoning of all moral values by his stuffy academic hero. Michael shakes loose from his barely-functioning marriage as sexual desire plunges him into moral and physical peril.

The best things here (as often with Stone) are the virtuoso descriptions of physical activity and the sultrily-evoked locales. The Deer Hunter-style shooting expedition that opens the book, during which Michael finds himself confronting both his own mortality and sense of identity, grips on a variety of levels. His subsequent attempt to retrieve the mysterious booty aboard a sunken plane, and the failure of his breathing apparatus, is as clammily disquieting as anything in Stone's work. So are the confrontations with the terrifying female drugs lynchpin. Her dialogue is particularly impressive - but then Stone has long had the gift of dialogue.

As ever, the author shares with another of his heroes, Joseph Conrad, a startling skill at creating a mélange of the poetic and the horrific. The sudden surfacing of the bloated corpse of a drowned pilot, like some fabulous sea monster with a host of beautiful but flesh-consuming fish, genuinely chills the blood. This may not be the best entry point for those new to Stone, but aficionados will be grateful for this glittering, audacious piece of work - even though we may wish it three times the length.