Gold Mine

by Wilbur Smith

First published 1970

Amazon

4.3(3,452)

Rod Ironsides becomes general manager of the Sonder Ditch gold mine in South Africa and is ordered to pursue a dangerous underground development. He believes the project is intended to reach a rich reef. The detailed underground setting gives the conspiracy practical force: ventilation, water pressure, blasting schedules and the location of old workings determine whether hundreds of miners survive.

In reality, financiers plan to flood and destroy major workings in order to manipulate the world gold market. Rod must recognise the conspiracy and protect miners trapped by decisions made far above ground. Although rooted in South Africa’s twentieth-century gold economy, the story is a contemporary industrial thriller rather than a reconstruction of a distinct historical event.