A nail-biter of a thriller written during the earliest days of the Second World War by master storyteller Innes. Set in August and September 1939, Innes’ hero, newspaperman Walter Craig, on a seaside holiday on the coast of Cornwall, discovers a secret German U-boat base carved out of a disused Cornish tin mine with its entrance through an undersea cave. Submarines exiting from the secret base wreak havoc with English shipping as soon as War breaks out (indeed, Innes has one of the base’s U-boats accounting for the infamous September 1939 sinking of the liner ATHENIA), and then set their sights on a British warship flotilla expected to soon sail through the English Channel. How meek, supposedly uncourageous drama critic Craig and his confederates - several Cornish miners and a female newspaper colleague of Craig’s - outwit the Germans makes for exciting reading. Indeed, Wreckers Must Breathe would have been just the sort of shot in the arm that beleaguered English readers would have welcomed during the dark days of 1940 (though perhaps the idea of even a fictitious U-boat base operating out of British coastal waters might have been a trifling unsettling!). Also of great interest to today’s reader is Innes’ account of the last days of peace in August 1939 as lived by his alter-ego Craig. His riveting descriptions of that time are unnerving and upsetting, even 60 years later. That this section is autobiographical cannot be discounted; Innes sets his early chapters in the Cornish seaside village of Cadgwith and his poignant introduction to Wreckers Must Breathe reads simply: “To the village of Cadgwith in Cornwall, where I spent my last holiday before the war and where I hope to spend my first holiday when it is all over.”