Alistair Maclean's Force 10 from Navarone

The thrilling sequel to Maclean’s runaway hit, The Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone is a great read, not to mention, an incredibly cool title. With extraordinarily graphic fight scenes and a surreal Alpine setting in what was former Yugoslavia, this book promises nail-biting action till the very end.

Captain Mallory, Corporal Miller and Colonel Andrea have just arrived at Termoli, Italy after their successful mission on the island of Navarone. Weary from the long hours of sleeplessness and the harrowing events of the past few days, they look forward to rest. But, Jensen, the chief of Allied Intelligence, Mediterranean, has other plans for them. War has broken out in Yugoslavia. The Cetniks, supported by the Germans, are seeking to crush the Partisans, who are backed by the allied forces. With three new additions to their team, all three being elite royal marine commandos, they set off to the Neretva valley of Bosnia. They parachute into what they believe is Partisan territory, their mission, to free four Allied agents who had been captured by the Germans on previous missions.

On the ground, however, they are captured by the Cetniks and the Germans, and are taken prisoners. They manage to fool their captors with a previously rehearsed cover story and get under way with the missions. But things are not what they seem and the people with them are not who they claim to be. What follows is a myriad of double crosses and triple crosses that leave you reeling and confused, masterfully planned and ruthlessly executed. This is a signature Maclean plot, and as in all Maclean books, the true mission is revealed only at the end, making for a delightful war/mystery novel.

Maclean has been skilful in portraying the emotions of his characters, or in some cases the lack of it, which is the case with two of the lead characters, Mallory and Andrea. This adds significantly to the mystery of the plot. He adds small pointers here and there to help the closely observant reader through the mystery. He adds a one line description of the fire burning at a blaze in the fireplace and at another point in the story, he says that it is burning low. Seemingly innocent, this gives us an idea of how much time has transpired in between. 

It seems that every time I read a Maclean book, I discover something new about his books, this quality I believe, is one of many, which make his books timeless and outstanding. This is one writer, whose books will never go out of readers, for his books are about much more than fancy weapons or wars. I believe them to be reflections of human emotions and testimonies to the variety of human populace in our vast world and the struggles they've had to endure to make our world what it is today. Let's also thank the Mallorys and Andreas of the real world for making it a much, much safer place, for not all is fiction.

Well, there's nothing left to say, sit down and buckle up! It is going to be one heck of a book!

Henri Charrière's Papillon

This is the story of a man outcast from society, locked away for life. A unique chance to live his life. To journey with him, to feel his emotions, see the world through his eyes. A chance to feel thankful for our lives and to rejoice for the wonders of humanity. Papillon is not just another book, not 'one' of the best books ever written, it is an adventure, a path, maybe, to self-discovery and what I feel, is the best book ever written.





Let me give you a bit of a backstory of the author here. Henry Charriere was an well known figure in the Paris underworld, well respected by his 'colleagues'. His special skills had earned him the name of Papillon, or Butterfly in French. But for all his shady doings, he was convicted in 1931 for the murder of a certain Roland LePetit, a charge he denied for the rest of his life. So at the young age of 25, Papillon was sentenced to a life of hard labor in prison. He was sent to serve his sentence in the penal settlement of French Guiana, which is now an overseas region of France in South America. There were only two things on his mind: escape, and revenge.

The Guiana was known for being impossible to escape from. It consisted of three islands set about 15 miles from the mainland where there were three more huge prisons. Although it was impossible to escape from any of the islands, the île du Diable, or the Devil's island was notoriously dangerous. Landing a boat there was so treacherous that prison officials built a cable car system from the nearby Île Royale. Ironically this was the very island from which Charriere made his final escape!

Right from the moment he stepped foot on the Guiana, he began plotting an escape. He made his first one after just six weeks in the Guiana. He sailed in an open boat for a thousand miles through shark infested waters to Colombia, where diseases like leprosy and malaria were rampant. There, he was taken in by an Indian tribe and lived there for a few months. Captured by the Colombian authorities, he was sent back to Guiana and forced to serve two years in solitary confinement, where the conditions were extremely inhumane. During his next thirteen years in the Guiana, he tried to escape nine times! Every time he tried an escape, the stakes were higher, but he never gave up. The final escape which is so painstakingly described in vivid detail is a tribute to his bottomless endurance and will power.

But his book is not just an account of his life. His book stands as a portal to his era. He tells us about the pearl diving Goajiras from Colombia, the swamps of Cayenne, the all encompassing nature of the people of Venezuela and so much more.  It stands as evidence to the great things human beings are capable of. He shares with us the story of how he managed the long years in solitary without going insane. His changing mindsets, his ideas and the amazing people he meets.

He recounts, before setting out to the Guianas, in a solitary prison at the Conciergerie in Paris, a priest met him and prayed with him. When he told the priest that his thirst for revenge could never be quenched, the priest told him that when he was older, he would give up the idea of punishment and revenge. 35 years later, as he writes, he wholeheartedly agrees with the priest. Another event that he writes about is an encounter with lepers. As he makes his first escape from the Guiana with a small group, he gets cheated on the sale of a boat for their escape. Another escaped convict living in the bush, called the masked Breton, instructs him to get a sturdy boat from the lepers of Ile Aux Pigeons or the pigeons island. When he gets to the island, the kindness of the lepers, the care they give his group, the precautions they take so as to not infect any of them overwhelms Papi. Spurned by society, disavowed by god himself, with nothing to gain or lose, these people understand the convicts' predicament and each leper on the island tries to help them succeed in their cavale. If this is not the height of humanity, these poor people falling to pieces, but with hearts far far bigger, then what is?

His natural instinct for survivalism is another thing that stuns us. He casually recollects the horrifying time he spent in the black holes of the Santa Marta prison in Colombia. The tide would come in every 11 hours and half his cell would be flooded, bringing with it sewer rats the size of cats, biting crabs and giant centipedes. When the tide ebbed, it would leave behind half an inch of filth and he would then have to clean his cell with a long piece of wood. Over the entire duration of his imprisonment, he values his health and mind the most, maintaining the former as far as he can on prison rations and the latter by reassuring himself of his imminent escape and by constantly plotting one.

A born story teller, Charriere narrates the story the way he would tell one. This makes the book all the more exciting, a breath of fresh air as opposed to the usual established ways of writing we are used to now. There is some controversy surrounding the facts presented in the book. Some allege that the events in the book are not true. But with such an amazing piece of literature as the end result, nobody really cares.

The least this book can do is to change your outlook of the world we live in. It is nothing short of revolutionary and I would recommend that you put this book on top of your to read list.  

Tom Clancy's Power Plays: Shadow Watch

First of all, let me sum up the plot. The year is 2001 and activities to put the International Space Station into orbit are on at full throttle. NASA and UpLink International, the main civilian contractor for the ISS, are gearing up for the launch of Orion, a manned shuttle carrying crucial components for the ISS. Everything seems perfect and a smooth launch is expected. But that's when things go terribly wrong.

In the disaster that ensues, one senior astronaut loses his life and the others barely escape with theirs. The shuttle is reduced to scrap metal, leaving behind bits and pieces. And a shocked world. But, even as the investigation into the matter begins, mysterious guerrilla attacks occur at the UpLink manufacturing facility in Brazil. Two hundred people perish in a train crash in Spain. A senior Russian physicist is murdered in a remote area of Albania. Are these events connected?

With the impending launch of the main modules of the ISS from the famous Baikonur cosmodrome in Russia, in a race against time, a handful of people must work together to piece together the jigsaw. For in their hands lies the fate of the ISS and as we find out later, the lives of millions.

The plot, as you can probably see, is amazing and is a signature, high voltage Tom Clancy plot. But the writing was not his and this was evident from the beginning. As an avid Tom Clancy reader, you get used to certain cliches, like for example the skillfully crafted fight scenes or the perfectly developed characters. You get used to the information overload in almost every page; to staying glued to the book, forgetting everything else in the real world and feeling as if you are there in person, shooting up a villain with an advanced rifle or driving that souped up Humvee. Each book of his is an amazing experience and this book was nothing close to that.

A little research showed me that I was, in fact, right. The writer was a certain Jerome Preisler and he'd been writing under Tom Clancy's brand name. This was in no way Tom Clancy's writing! However, with all that said, this book was not bad. If it had been released under a name other than Tom Clancy's, I would have actually voted it good!

So the final verdict! Once you've blotted out Tom Clancy from your mind, once you've lowered your expectations and when you have lots and lots of free time with nothing better to read, then this book is very much worth a read!

Shout At The Devil by Wilbur Smith

This was my first Wilbur Smith book and I have to say, I loved it!

It is the eve of WWI, tensions are mounting all over the world and the people brace for the imminent bloodshed. Down in German occupied East Africa however, laughing in the face of Death is an unlikely duo: A flamboyant Irish American, Flynn O'Flynn, who proclaims himself to be the best ivory poacher in Africa and the perfect Englishman, Sebastian Oldsmith. The latter, on his way to Australia, ends up in Zanzibar where his belongings are stolen. An unwily Oldsmith is then recruited by Flynn, who shows him a letter from the German emperor himself, requesting Flynn to shoot up all his elephants because they were 'eating up all the grass and smashing up all the trees and things'! 

What begins as a comic escapade transforms into horrifying reality as WWI sets in and death strikes those dearest to them. The plot becomes grisly all too soon and the next thing you know people are dying left and right in manners I wouldn't care to recollect.

Nobody writes like Smith. He manages to craft detailed descriptions of Africa, it's people and their ways while at the same time bringing out an edge-of-your seat thriller. There is action right from the start, chases by land and sea, nasty crocodiles and nastier Germans, massacres, ambushes and disease. The level of detail he gets into is not for the faint hearted. Days after reading this book, the images of a dying Portuguese pilot and the graphic scenes of elephant slaughter is still all too vivid in my mind. But seriously, sentences like '...the kidneys popped like overripe Satsuma plums' made me reconsider dinner!  

What I loved here apart from the plot itself was that the villains, the Germans, were not portrayed entirely as the bad guys. Some of their seamen were cast as courageous, chivalrous and heroic. The story has a ring of authenticity to it, no part of it seemingly fictional or any person in the cast super-heroic. I found this lacking in the works of many authors, even some whose books I really like.

This book was unique and was a refreshing experience for me, very different from others in the same category. I look forward to reading more of Smith's books. 

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six

Pulling off 900 or so odd pages is a hard enough task for any author. But to make it doubly interesting to the reader is something only a few authors can dream of, and Tom Clancy is definitely one of them. All of his books overdose on detail so much that you can hardly keep track of the places, terms and such. But that is exactly what you'll love him for! In fact, I've come to believe, if a person remembers at least half the details in his war novels, he'll probably be shipped off by the NSA!

John Clark is back! But this time around, unfortunately, he is just a 'suit', a guy with a 'boring', as he calls it, desk job. Domingo Chavez, the adorable-yet-deadly Latino son-in-law of Clark heads a covert counter terrorist team based out of U.K under the able guidance of Clark. The team has many successful encounters under its belt and is earning its recognition. But looking closer and closer into the issues they'd dealt with, they begin to realize that they are dealing with something far greater and deadlier, something on the scale which they can hardly fathom.


"Look closely, because the closer you think you are, the less you'll actually see." -You know where this came from! (Best read in your mind in Morgan Freeman's voice)


The range of topics and ideas this book explores is quite astounding. An élite multinational counter terrorist force; a bunch of deadly eco terrorists who are hell bent on taking over the world; the Irish revolutionary army, the Basque terrorists of France and so much more. Clancy is a master of mystery, he builds up the theme very subtly and soundly, that only after reading through more than half the book do you really get the big picture, and that too, very vaguely. The multi stranded narrative is quite complex and weaves back and forth between multiple characters, scenes and back stories. But for all that, it is not in the least a pain to follow. A seemingly impossible task, you also remember many names almost as if by magic!

Lots of authors force their ideas upon you, we have no choice but to agree with their ideology and follow the plot. But Clancy is different, he tries to be a chronicler, he shows us the situation and delves deep into the minds of the people who are central to the story. This enables us to get a true feeling for the situation and perhaps think it out ourselves. I know because I did, and I have to tell you, it is extremely hard to think about a thriller like this one because all you can think about is to finish it as soon as possible!

One of the best books I've ever read, this book is more than worth a read. I read it for 7 hours straight till 4 in the morning! And also, many gamers would recognize, this book was made into a immensely popular game series. 

The Dark Crusader by Alistair Maclean

Written in his glory days, Maclean's gift to devise a brilliant and cunning plot is perhaps best represented by this book. This cold war story plunges right into the action and keeps it's pace throughout the book. Although the main focus is rocket science and pretty advanced stuff at that, he manages to present the facts in a digestible, straight forward way. This book coincided with the age of rising interest in solid fuel rocketry among the scientific community. (You can learn more more about solid fuel rockets here or here.)

Rocket fuel expert and intelligence agent John Bentall is sent to investigate the mysterious disappearances of 8 of Britain's leading rocket scientists. At the same time, 9 mysterious advertisements crop up in the newspapers. He and the agent Marie Hopeman, posing as his wife, travel to Sydney on acceptance of the ninth advertisement. However, they are kidnapped en route to Sydney at Fiji and made captive on board a schooner (which is a ship by the way). They are then deftly manipulated by the kidnappers and end up on an island supposedly by accident. Their host on the island who takes good care of them is a well respected archaeologist, seems to be a pleasant man, but our hero feels otherwise. He suddenly finds himself in the midst of desperate men and a game of deceit. The stakes of which are very high, world domination, no less.

John Bentall is quite a bit different from Maclean's other protagonists, he displays an excessively self depreciating character and makes mistakes which play the duo right into the trap set by the villains. Marie Hopeman, his companion, doesn't play a major role here and the romance between them was a bit out of place. The main villain is cast as an exceptionally brilliant character and he was, for a change, a memorable one.

What I absolutely loved was that he gave emotional and human touches to even the secondary characters in the plot, which is not something you see in every other book.

The only thing I didn't like in this book was that Maclean cast Asians to be the villains in the plot. He cast them both as the foot soldiers and as the evil mastermind behind the whole plot. It was probably due to the bad 'encounters' he had with the Asians in WWII. But I did notice that he uses his books one too many times to foil them. I let the matter rest, we all have our mindsets.

All in all, this a great read provided that you are willing to suspend your disbelief just a little bit.
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The Guns of Navarone

The Guns of Navarone by Alistair Maclean is one of the best books set during World War 2. Those of us who have read his novels know that it is not only the high voltage plot that reels us in, but also the amount of detail and the depth assigned to the characters. We see his characters not only as mere pawns enacting his plot but also as real humans, people just like us. This I believe is enough to have made him "The man with the Golden Typewriter".

Now where would a WWII book be without the Nazis? The main playground in this book is the island of Navarone in the Aegan sea. The Germans have established an 'impenetrable fortress' in the island and with the help of the special Guns of Navarone enjoy almost complete dominance over the Aegan islands. There is only the island of Kheros left under the control of the Allied powers and their time is running out fast. The 1200 Allied soldiers holed up here await evacuation, but evacuation by sea is impossible with the presence of the massive guns of Navarone nearby. After several futile attempts by the Allies to take the guns out of the equation, they send in a covert sabotage team to wreck the guns. What follows is a fast paced action thriller that has you rushing to the climax. While the plot and the island are fictitious, a little research brings up a place called Navarino in the Aegan, the site of a major battle in the previous century. The plot however is based on the Battle of Leros, the central event in the Dodecanese campaign, an effort by the Allied powers to reclaim the Aegan islands. 

The lead character in the book is Captain Keith Mallory, a legendary mountaineer turned commando from New Zealand. An engaging character who takes to his job with utmost sincerity, he is completely practical and non sentimental. He mulls over this fact over the course of the book. His close associate, Andrea is the epitome of a fighting machine and is my favourite character in the book. In the beautiful words of Maclean himself, "A destroyer of his fellow-man, he loved his fellow-man above all things. Andrea killed neither for revenge, nor from hate, nor nationalism, nor for the sake of any of the other "isms" which self-seekers and fools and knaves employ as beguilement to the battlefield and justification for the slaughter of millions too young and too unknowing to comprehend the dreadful futility of it all Andrea killed simply that better men might live." 

Along with Corporal 'Dusty' Miller, Lieutenant Andy Stevens and Casey Brown, all of them legends in their own right, they embark on a mission that some would deem to be suicidal. Failure is not an option for these men as the lives of a thousand depend on them. Maclean weaves a spell on the readers with feats of courage, deceit and loads of breath taking action. The book is nothing short of a masterpiece!