Alistair
Maclean
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- What,
you think I only read two books in ten days in April? Naah, I'm faster than
that.
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- Alistair
Maclean's 1970 book Force 10 from Navarone is the original of
which his Partisans in 1982 was the poor copy. Strangely, while a
sequel to his earlier bestseller The Guns of Navarone, it is based
not on the book, but the movie. That was disturbing to me, a reader
more than a movie buff, when I first read it in the 80s. Now, I
don't quite have the same feeling of being let down; time does heal
many wounds.
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- Like
Partisans, it has an enigmatic hero, a huge sidekick who
mysteriously defers to the hero despite being way above him in
rank/ability, another sidekick who gets things done, a beautiful
enemy agent with her sidekick, evil German and Yugoslav villains,
and a complex plot on the part of the Allied command in the second
World War to bring the Germans in Yugoslavia to their knees. Plus
other supporting characters.
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- If
you have to choose between these two books, drop Partisans and
pick this one. It's one of Maclean's better books, but not a patch
on The Guns of Navarone. Still, five stars, with a couple of the
points on the last star knocked off.
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- I'll
come back later in the day with comments on two books by Mark
Gimenez (what, you think I read only three books in ten days?
Muwahahaha!).
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- Next
up to read are: I'm Feeling Lucky by Douglas Edwards, which I have
to read for work related reasons (ha! everyone should get so lucky), The Maruti Story by RC Bhargava and Seetha (he's more honest about
acknowledging the help he got on an auto-biography than most), and The Associate by John Grisham.
Thrillers | Alistair
Maclean
I've
recently read a bunch of Alistair Macleans. I picked up six in a
bookshop a few weeks ago and have read four of them, two of them for
the first time. That last is strange, considering how popular AM
was in the 1970s. Anyway, I'm still waiting for them to reissue The
Golden Rendezvous, still one of my faves, and see if it stands up to
my memories.
Onward! Partisans is the weakest of the bunch. You have Maclean's trademark
cryptic hero, with his faithful sidekicks, mysterious (and almost
always innocent) women who somehow always manage to be less competent
than they are pretty (exception: The Satan Bug) but it never goes anywhere. Too predictable to be fun. Read The Guns of Navarone instead.
Circus manages surprises till the very last page, even the very last line
(damn, I think that might be a spoiler). I smiled to read that the
hero was to infiltrate the Iron Curtain to bring back the 'formula'
for antimatter, but in the year it was written, that was cutting edge
stuff. I still feel there is something wrong with the antimatter to
energy conversion ratios in the book, but haven't sat down with my
calculator. This one was more fun, if a bit slower than many
thrillers of today, and even than of AM himself. And I'd completely
forgotten the end, so it was good to re-read and get surprised all
over again.
San
Andreas is another one I hadn't read before. A bit over the top, but
enjoyable nonetheless, despite severe reservations about whether a
German Luftwaffe pilot would really do what it said in the book (not
a spoiler). I learned something interesting about submarines
and ships. Archie the hero triumphs over all. Interesting twists, but
not too many of them. Flannelfoot is a good name for a villain,
though!
The
Lonely Sea was the other re-read. It's a collection of AM's short
stories, including the prizewinning story that set him on his writing
career, becoming an international bestseller, only overtaken I think
by Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling. These are all excellent stories,
some of them based on facts, and some purely fiction. My favourite in
these is probably St George and the Dragon. It's interesting to note
that AM wrote such stories decades before Jeffery Archer did.
Here's
a quote from an essay on writing, which will resonate with many
writers:
The main
benefits of being a full-time writer are that they confer on one a
remarkable degree of independence and freedom, but that freedom must
never be misinterpreted as irresponsibility.
I
don't have to start work and 9 a.m., and I don't: I usually start
between six and seven in the morning.
:)
Read and enjoy.
