Hal and Roger's final adventure in Africa takes them to the deepest darkest Congo where they must capture rare mountain gorillas and other animals for their father's firm. Here there are plenty of dangerous obstacles for them to tackle, including Gog; an enraged silverback with a festering bullet wound, a host of venomous snakes, a murderous band of gorilla poachers, and a foolish Belgian hunter named Tieg. The latter is more or less a rehash of the bumbling fraud Colonel Bigg from African Adventure and is promptly forgotten near the end of the book. The poacher gang are barely worth a mention, for besides massacring innocent gorillas, they are easily vanquished.
Willard Price tries hard to make gorillas scary whilst teaching readers that they are in fact gentle creatures. He also tries to play up their intelligence by stretching the truth to breaking point. In some of the more ridiculous scenes, the antagonist gorilla sets fires, lays traps, and even tries to assassinate the boys with a deadly mamba. A freakishly charitable chimpanzee is seen helping an injured colobus monkey, when in real life they hunt them for meat. Despite these absurdities, there is a large variety of interesting wildlife in Gorilla Adventure and the action rarely lets up. This book may have just as conveniently been titled 'Snake Adventure', as the boys spend more time bagging these than gorillas. It's nice to see Roger receive a life threatening injury from a spitting cobra to highlight the risks of their profession.
Rating: 4/5
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