Alistair MacLean

Alistair (Stuart) MacLean (1922-1987) - wrote also as Ian Stuart

"But -" I paused. "Good God, Gregori, no sane man, not even the most monstrous criminal in history, would ever dream of such, of such - In the name of heaven, man, you can't mean it!"

"It may be that I am not sane," he said.
(from The Satan Bug, 1962)

It may be that even I am not sane.....who else would invite towards herself....so much world-wide controversy ?!- Tina Tid-Bits - One can cut-paste this- permission granted.

Scottish writer who became known for his well crafted adventure thrillers. The sea or the icy north was MacLean's favorite setting, from H.M.S. Ulysses (1955) and Ice Station Zebra (1963) to his late collection of short stories, The Lonely Sea (1985). A number of MacLean's books gained a huge success as films, among them

Where Eagles Dare, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton,

The Guns of Navarone, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn,

Ice Station Zebra, and Breakheart Pass, starring Charles Bronson.

Usually MacLean's heroes are calm, cynical men who are devoted to their work, and carry some kind of secret knowledge.

"The job, the job, always the job on hand," the colonel had repeated once, twice, a thousand times, "Success or failure in what you do may be desperately important to others, but it must never matter a damn to you." (from The Last Frontier, 1959).

The heroes fight against incredible odds and of course there are the evil opponents, a wide variety of humorless villains, the Nazis, terrorists, Communists, drug dealers, and foreign agents. During the course of the story, the protagonist is pushed to the limits of his physical and sometimes mental endurance. Nature is a central element in MacLean's work, especially the North Atlantic Seas, ice mountains, deep gulches, desert quicksands, frozen Arctic tundra. Even the ordinary Central European winter conditions are nearly fatal to MacLean's hero in The Secret Ways (1959): "Only the snow was real, the snow and that bone-deep, sub-zero cold that shrouded him from head to toe in a blanket of ice and continuously shook his entire body in violent, uncontrollable spasms of shivering, like a man suffering from ague."

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing," MacLean once stated in an interview. "I wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished." In the 1960s and 1970s MacLean was one of the best selling thriller writers in the world. He had retired as a tax exile to Switzerland and published books, in which the characters sometimes save the world as in Goodbye California (1978). It dealt with the threat of a major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, an event that would wash much of the state of California into the sea. In Santorini (1986), a plane carrying hydrogen and atom bombs drops into the sea in an area subject to volcanic eruptions - and one of the bombs is ticking.

MacLean died of heart failure in Munich on February 2, 1987. He was buried in Celigny, Switzerland. MacLean left a number of story outlines, commissioned by an American film company, to be written by other authors. He was married twice, first to Gisela MacLean; they had three sons, and then to Marcelle Gorgeus in 1972.

	Alistair (Stuart) MacLean (1922-1987) - wrote also as Ian Stuart "But -" I paused. "Good God, Gregori, no sane man, not even the most monstrous criminal in history, would ever dream of such, of such - In the name of heaven, man, you can't mean it!" "It may be that I am not sane," he said. (from The Satan Bug, 1962) It may be that even I am not sane.....who else would invite towards herself....so much world-wide controversy ?!- Tina Tid-Bits - One can cut-paste this- permission granted.

Scottish writer who became known for his well crafted adventure thrillers. The sea or the icy north was MacLean's favorite setting, from H.M.S. Ulysses (1955) and Ice Station Zebra (1963) to his late collection of short stories, The Lonely Sea (1985). A number of MacLean's books gained a huge success as films, among them Where Eagles Dare, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton, The Guns of Navarone, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn, Ice Station Zebra, and Breakheart Pass, starring Charles Bronson. "Gangsters and hoodlums are notoriously the world's worst marksmen, their usual method being to come within a couple of yards before firing or spraying the landscape with a sufficient hail of bullets to make the law of averages work for them and I had heard a hundred times that those boys couldn't hit a barn door at ten paces. But maybe Larry had never heard of this, or maybe the rule applied only to barn doors." (from Fear Is the Key, 1961) Alistair MacLean was born in Glasgow, the son of a minister. The family spoke the Scottish language, Gaelic, and English was MacLean's second language. The family moved north to Daviot, near Inverness, and MacLean spent his early years in the Scottish Highlands. His father died when Alistair was 14, and he returned to Glasgow with his mother. He left school at 17 and at the age of eighteen in 1941, MacLean joined the Royal Navy. He served during World War II as a torpedo man in Home, Mediterranean and Eastern Fleets. Much of the time he served on Russian convoy routes, and from these experiences he drew heavily for his novels about the sea. MacLean was captured by the Japanese and tortured, and in 1946 he returned home.
After the war, MacLean gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a teacher at Gallowfleet Secondary School. During his spare time MacLean began writing short stories. In 1954 he entered a short story competition of the Glasgow Herald with the 'Dileas.' It won the first prize of £100. With encouragement from the publishing company Collins, MacLean wrote his first novel, H.M.S. Ulysses. It was based on his experiences on a navy ship escorting merchant vessels in the Arctic Ocean and became a bestseller. H.M.S. Ulysses is regarded alongside Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny (1951) and Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea (1951) as one of the classic novels of navy ships. From 1955 MacLean devoted himself entirely to writing, with great success. His next books, Guns of Navarone (1957) and South by Java Head (1957), were war stories. The Guns of Navarone (1957) depicted a five men sabotage team sent to destroy two giant guns at Navarone. The book was filmed in 1961 and won an Academy Award for special effects. With The Last Frontier (1959) MacLean left war stories behind for a while. The novel was a spy adventure in which an agent is sent behind the iron curtain to rescue an English scientist. In the early 1960s MacLean wrote two novels under the pseudonym of Ian Stuart. The Satan Bug, dealing with the disappearance of a deadly toxin from behind the locked doors of a laboratory, and The Dark Crusader, about a tough secret agent in a Polynesian island, were both Cold War thrillers. MacLean did not try to change his style, and readers familiar with his work easily recognized the author behind his Scottish pseudonym. Between the years 1957 and 1963 MacLean lived in Geneva. He owned Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, and in the 1960s ran hotels in England for four years.
Usually MacLean's heroes are calm, cynical men who are devoted to their work, and carry some kind of secret knowledge. "The job, the job, always the job on hand," the colonel had repeated once, twice, a thousand times, "Success or failure in what you do may be desperately important to others, but it must never matter a damn to you." (from The Last Frontier, 1959). The heroes fight against incredible odds and of course there are the evil opponents, a wide variety of humorless villains, the Nazis, terrorists, Communists, drug dealers, and foreign agents. During the course of the story, the protagonist is pushed to the limits of his physical and sometimes mental endurance. Nature is a central element in MacLean's work, especially the North Atlantic Seas, ice mountains, deep gulches, desert quicksands, frozen Arctic tundra. Even the ordinary Central European winter conditions are nearly fatal to MacLean's hero in The Secret Ways (1959): "Only the snow was real, the snow and that bone-deep, sub-zero cold that shrouded him from head to toe in a blanket of ice and continuously shook his entire body in violent, uncontrollable spasms of shivering, like a man suffering from ague."
I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing," MacLean once stated in an interview. "I wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished." In the 1960s and 1970s MacLean was one of the best selling thriller writers in the world. He had retired as a tax exile to Switzerland and published books, in which the characters sometimes save the world as in Goodbye California (1978). It dealt with the threat of a major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, an event that would wash much of the state of California into the sea. In Santorini (1986), a plane carrying hydrogen and atom bombs drops into the sea in an area subject to volcanic eruptions - and one of the bombs is ticking.
MacLean died of heart failure in Munich on February 2, 1987. He was buried in Celigny, Switzerland. MacLean left a number of story outlines, commissioned by an American film company, to be written by other authors. He was married twice, first to Gisela MacLean; they had three sons, and then to Marcelle Gorgeus in 1972.
My Comments : I remember reading "Fear is the key" where the villain was dressed like a Lady who was constantly knitting. The hero sent a wrong telegraphed message (that time there was no phone or mobile mind you) and made the villains make this grave mistake of taking the trunks loaded with muck to their (another ship ) and the hero escaped with the gold & the heroine (a spoilt lady who had beautiful lacy nighties stuffed in her cupboard) and eventually lived happily ever after ! Really these villains are damn foolish I must say !