Provided are a method, computer program product and data processing apparatus for recovery from interprocess communication failures, the method comprising: in response to an initiator process requesting interprocess communication (IPC) with a responder process via an IPC link, recognizing if the initiator process does not have the expected write control of the IPC link and setting an indicator. A process other than the initiator process checks the indicator (such as after a timeout, or periodically) and, if the indicator has been set, notifies the initiator process to take control. This method avoids potential stalemate situations in which neither the initiator nor the responder process can take control, without reliance on mutex locks for every exchange of data and control.