I really enjoyed this novel - I get that it was problematic but it's extremely well written, it seems strongly researched, and it's outrageous dramatic fun. You can sense West wrote a lot of trashy radio serials and liked the movies.
It's about the shenanigans in the New Guinea Highlands when that country was an Australian trusteeship. An ex-Nazi doctor has plans to recruit the local natives and become a leader (the Claude Rains role), his horny wife is a sex bomb who all the whites fall in love with but who is quite sympathetic being a victim of the Nazis (the Ava Gardner part), a drunken Englishman across gossip (the Thomas Mitchell part), a toff-nosed English coffee merchant (the George Sanders/Vincent Price part), the anthropologist (the skinny-character-actor part), the fresh faced Aussie officer (the Charles Tingwell as he was then part), the wise old priest (the Barry Fitzgerald part), the native girl hot for the German and the evil sorcerer (either played by actors in black face or inexperienced locals).... and then a heroic Australian officer who only pops up in the last third (the Robert Stack part). This random Aussie coming along to save the day only appearing at the end, and having Ava Gardner love him all along, felt weird... this felt like West made him up on the spot.
The film probably could have increased its death toll, and the attitudes are of the 1950s, but I loved its prose, and action.
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