Alistair MacLean is known as the master of action and suspense, and this is an almost unbelievably tense adventure.
1942: As Singapore falls to the invading Japanese, black smoke chokes out the city and the last planes and ships have departed. Anyone who could has already evacuated. A ragtag group collect at the waterfront - a Corporal leading maimed and emaciated soldiers; five White, Chinese and Malay nurses; Peter, a lost English boy of just two and a half with his old nurse; a Dutchman, a Muslim priest - but of importance is Retired Brigadier-General Farnholme, acting a drunken fool but (with seventeen years counter-espionage in South Asia) secretly carrying the blueprints of the Japanese plans to invade Australia. Their only hope a deathtrap trawler led by a renegade captain.They board the ship but are quickly attacked by the Japanese.
Captain Findhorn of the British oil tanker Viroma hears the SOS call and arrives to rescue the survivors of the burning, sinking ship. It's an exciting sequence, impossible anyone could have survived. As day breaks, the Japanese zero fighters begin bombing the Viroma, and characters which seemed central are maimed or killed. Carrying tons of valuable high-grade oil, the ship is quickly ignited in a steady roar of metal-melting white heat, and unknown to the Japanese, a cargo of ten thousand barrels of aircraft fuel is about to explode. This captivating section surpasses the last in edge-of-your-seat tension.
The few survivors escape into a lifeboat - only to spend days adrift without food, water or medical supplies under the unrelenting sun. Hunted by Japanese submarines, fighter planes, and eventually a trawler - this is just the halfway point of the novel.
Despite falling from one disaster to another, MacLean manages to give the characters solid backgrounds and humanity. We care about their struggle as the secrets they hold are slowly released - traitors, renegades, spies, intimate histories that must never be revealed, the invasion plans, and surprisingly, a cache of uncut diamonds - no one is who they seem, and no one is immune to being killed at any moment.
The adventure continues when they eventually fight off the Japanese face to face in the deadly jungles of Java, or be tortured in inhumane ways.
MacLean's third novel - written after The Guns of Navarone - is very cinematic, and film rights were quickly bought up, helping to get this novel published. Attempts in 1957 and 1960 failed to materialize.
For fans of action and adventure grounded in heart and heroism.
Recommended!
My other reviews for Alistair MacLean:
1958 / Tradeback / 448 pages
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