# The Alistair McLean appreciation thread
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 10, 2013, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859 "2013-02-10T06:17:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/1 "2013-02-10T06:17:07Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@toast\_pakora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toast_pakora)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/2 "2013-02-10T06:37:44Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/3 "2013-02-10T07:37:16Z")
_HMS Ulysses_ is my favorite of his.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/4 "2013-02-10T13:17:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> _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.
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/5 "2013-02-10T14:28:02Z")
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! 😛
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/6 "2013-02-10T14:35:57Z")
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! 😛
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2013, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/7 "2013-02-10T15:56:07Z")
I’ve read two – _The Guns of Navarone_ and _Bear Island_ – and enjoyed them both.
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### Author:  [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/8 "2013-02-11T02:43:56Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/9 "2013-02-11T02:54:18Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#):
>
> I’ve read two – _The Guns of Navarone_ and _Bear Island_ – and enjoyed them both.
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.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/10 "2013-02-11T03:05:06Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/11 "2013-02-11T05:12:25Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/12 "2013-02-11T06:45:51Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/13 "2013-02-11T12:23:41Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/14 "2013-02-11T12:35:08Z")
Formulaic and hackneyed. Naturally as a teenaged boy I read every one I could get my hands on.
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### Author:  [@carlb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carlb)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/15 "2013-02-11T12:56:18Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/16 "2013-02-11T13:42:05Z")
> [@Gyrate](#):
>
> Formulaic and hackneyed. Naturally as a teenaged boy I read every one I could get my hands on.
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_
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### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/17 "2013-02-11T15:24:13Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/18 "2013-02-11T15:25:44Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/19 "2013-02-11T15:27:10Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2013, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alistair-mclean-appreciation-thread/649859/20 "2013-02-11T17:48:29Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#):
>
> 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.
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.
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