I absolutely loved his books growing up, and read almost all of them. Well written, fast paced plots with just the right amount of dry humour thrown in. Where Eagles Dare and Ice Station Zebra are among my favourite books of all time. Rawlings and Zabrinksi never fail to crack me up. There were some bad, formula driven books, and plenty of inconsistencies and plot holes even in the good ones, but these are easily overlooked. So, is McLean liked on the Dope? What are your favourite books by him? Does he have much of a market still? I know in India a new edition of his books was released a few years ago.
I had Night Without End so I reread that a few times growing up. I liked his earlier books. Then somewhere around Puppet On A Chain and Caravan to Vaccares I lost interest; drugs and hippies are boring. Even as a kid I thought the stories were awkward.
I enjoy that genre, 50s-60s manly men in the UK or Europe. Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes are other authors.
HMS Ulysses is my favorite of his.
Same here. It’s an excellent and harrowing book, and likely the only one that bears re-reading.
I love the part in Where Eagles Dare when Burton and Eastwood are sneaking through the castle, popping German sentries in the back with a silenced pistol … until they reach the communications shack, where they find the only German in the castle sitting right next to an alarm button. Eastwood tries sneaking up on him with a knife and steps on a loose floorboard … the German looks up, sees Eastwood just in time, and then punches the alarm button … and as the klaxon starts to reverberate through the castle, *Burton shoots him in the back with the silenced pistol anyway! *
Another GREAT moment in cinema! 
Did they ever make a movie of South by Java Head? I would also have loved to watch the part where Nicholson mistakes a Japanese PT boat for an American naval vessel!
I’ve read two – The Guns of Navarone and Bear Island – and enjoyed them both.
I read most of the McLean books back when I was a kid. His stuff was pretty formulaic, though, and I usually knew who the bad guy was by the third or fourth chapter. But that didn’t stop me from devouring his books.
I did have one bizarre experience, once. I was in the middle of a book and I kept thinking that I had read it before, but the title didn’t ring a bell. Every time I finished a chapter, though, I kept having a weird feeling. Finally, I took a really long look at the cover, and there in tiny print, it said, “Previously published as …”.
I think it may have been Puppet on a Chain. I was so ticked off, but I read it anyway because I had nothing else to read.
I haven’t read Bear Island, but I read The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, and a ton of his other books, and most were fantastic.
It’s been a long time and my memory of the plots is dim, but I really loved his books as a kid and devoured most of them, even the not so good ones. I’ve been avoiding re-visiting them for fear of ruining a teenage memory, but this thread is tempting me.
I literally could not put HMS Ulysses down. I read it in one, long, all-night sitting. I do not think I have ever quite done that with another book (a few others kept me up all night, but they didn’t get finished). Oddly, though, it did not leave me particularly enthusiastic to seek out his other stuff. I think I had already read Ice Station Zebra before this, which was fun, but did not grip me the way HMS Ulysses did.
HMS Ulysses was a whole different class of book. It was his first, and a much more serious representation of war, almost a stab at a literary novel, rather than just an enjoyable, plot driven narrative like his later efforts were. Bear Island was actually one that I didn’t enjoy a lot. Also, BobArghh, he didn’t write mysteries often, so “Knowing who the bad guy was” wasn’t often important.
Also, how could I forget? Golden Gate was the first book of his that I read, and while revisiting it requires a *lot * of disbelief suspension, when I was a kid I loved that book.
The only one I’ve read is When Eight Bells Toll, which was a set book at school one year… Enjoyed it well enough but didn’t go on to read any of his others though.
Formulaic and hackneyed. Naturally as a teenaged boy I read every one I could get my hands on.
I absolutely devoured his novels starting some time in Jr. High school. The Guns of Navarone was probably the first, and I just moved right through every one I could get my hands on (between the school library and the township public library, I think I read everything he had published up to that point).
I mistakenly told our family friend (who was Scottish) that I was reading books by this British author named Alistair MacLean, and was promptly and firmly, but gently, informed that he was Scottish, not British. Hey, he used words like, “lorry,” and, “colour,” so he must have been British to my 12-year-old mind.
HMS Ulysses was my introduction to bleak fiction. I had never before read a book in which the protagonists were anything but exceptional, fortunate, and successful. It was a real eye-opener for me at that age.
Haha same here, also the aforementioned Desmond Bagley and Hammond Innes, and add in Ian Fleming. I didn’t get into any bother about it, but my teacher in primary 5 (6?) did contact my parents about me doing a book report on Live and Let Die
Read every one I could get my hands on and they filled the shelf in my room alongside those by Louis L’Amour. When they came out as movies I held them right up there next to those involving one James Bond.
He was great up until *Bear Island *or the Way to Dusty Death.
Fear is the Key, Ice Station Zebra and The Black Shrike (Dark Crusader in the UK) are my favorites.
Loved his books but its got to be 20 years since I read any of them. Probably more. Can’t remember a damn thing except the movies.
Yeah, I eventually stopped reading somewhere around Seawitch when his characters started turning into superheros. But in his early days, he was my favorite thriller author. You listed two of my favorites: Fear is the Key and The Black Shrike. The Black Shrike is notable for its unusual ending which I won’t spoil.