From the 1950s through to the 1980s, Alistair MacLean had a spectacularly successful run as an adventure/thriller writer. Starting with the serious "H.M.S Ulysses", about the Murmansk Run of convoy ships during WWIl, and the excellent WWII adventure "The Guns of Navarone", Maclean then produced 29 books of varying degrees of quality, all characterized by complicated ( if sometimes improbable) plots, exotic locations, double and triple crosses, and some suspenseful action. MacLean took the James Bond model from Ian Fleming, removed the sex, the sadism, and the misogyny, and produced a kind of " boy's own adventure " ,"ripping yarn" for the Cold War. Many of his books were filmed( some well, most badly), and his later books began to feel like movie treatments filled with contrived stories, wooden, stereotypical characterizations, and leaden dialogue. Success, easy money, and alcohol all took their toll, until he died in 1987. Still, for a while, he had quite a run.
