This is a singularly strange action yarn where the bad guys are more likable than the good guys and the crime scene includes jape-filled press conferences and hostage-takers who pause for photographs.
“I’ve never been responsible for anybody’s death in my life,” says the top hijacker, a fellow named Branson. It’s a kind of villainous boast you don’t expect, but he really means it.
In the opening chapter, Branson and his henchmen executes a plot that nets him not only the President of the United States and two Arab oil potentates but also the Golden Gate Bridge. His price to release them: half a billion dollars, as well as pardons for him and his team.
“The man’s mad, mad, mad!” the captive president roars, but Branson’s plan unfolds like clockwork. That is until an undercover FBI agent infiltrates the scene and starts the process of throwing a monkey in the wrench.
Except for its low body count, Golden Gate falls in line with Alistair MacLean’s time-tested formula of tough but witty heroes standing up against insurmountable odds with occasional assistance but no hanky-panky from lovely women. This time the challenge is hardly that daunting, though, and the overall energy level rather muted.
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| San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge is the setting for the novel, where the President and his escort are boxed in and captured by Branson and his crew. Demolitions are then placed below the arches to create a total collapse if the military moves in. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Bridge |
I did love this book, back when I was 13. Reading it again, I could’t help but feel the author was very bored writing it. Also, very drunk. Alcoholism is a terrible disease, and when you work a lonely furrow like book writing, it can pack a punch. Wikipedia says it caused his death; certainly the subject of booze comes up often in The Golden Gate:
Whatever the camp followers in the Presidential motorcade were going to suffer from, it clearly wasn’t going to be thirst. There were two rows of vertically stacked bottles, the first ten to the left, five in each row, being bourbon and scotch…
There were bottles of liquor on the wall-mounted sideboard and, judging from the levels of the liquids in the bottles and the glasses in front of the five men, they weren’t there for purely decorative purposes…
“Do you have any gin? … I told Branson that I didn’t drink and that’s why I have a nose like a bloodhound. I shouldn’t care for him to see me with a glass of something amber in my hand.”
The speaker of the last quote is a man named Revson, the aforementioned FBI guy. The fact he he is traveling with the presidential motorcade disguised as a reporter makes no sense, given the otherwise threadbare security around the president.
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| Author Alistair MacLean was a formidable figure in the world of adventure fiction. Yet by The Golden Gate's publication, he was perhaps better known for screen adaptations of his work. This proved a rare book of his that didn't get made into a movie. https://flashbak.com/the-pioneering-novels-and-kick-ass-thrills-of-alistair-maclean-428930/ |
The book opens on Branson and his men setting in motion their big scheme, which involves gas bombs in the Presidential bus and subduing and impersonating critical security personnel before the President arrives. The fact they can operate with such impunity may strain credulity, but never mind that. MacLean assures us repeatedly that Branson and his team are clever and efficient, so there.
Just not exactly deadly. There’s this exchange early on, between one of Branson’s men and an Air Force officer just emerging from a whiff of knock-out gas:
“You’re going to kill us?”
“What on earth for?” Bradley’s surprise was genuine.
“We can identify you.”
“You’ll never see us again.”
A few pages later, another member of the conspiracy is told by a leader not to kill unless he has to. If he does, he loses half his cut. Branson is quite serious about this; time and again we are reminded of his inherent dislike for killing what he calls “innocent” victims. He knows killers are more hunted than other criminals, so there is a practical concern, but mostly it seems an ethical concern.
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| Hijacking capers were popular in the 1970s. The 1974 movie The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3, starring Walter Matthew and Robert Shaw, also involves hostage taking and mass transit. Except here the stakes are much lower and the hijackers make no effort at playing nice. Image from https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/25/the-taking-of-pelham-one-two-three-united-artists-1974-my-review/ |
There is a prescient whiff of Die Hard in the way MacLean sets things up. Branson even anticipates Hans Gruber at one point:
“A crook? Yes. A common criminal? No, I’m a most uncommon criminal.”
He’s not a terrorist, you see, but a businessman. He grew up in a life of privilege and saw his father, an investment banker, amass a large fortune by bilking the less fortunate of their earnings. He wants no part of that world: “I at least rob wealthy institutions.”
After a few chapters, I found myself liking Branson a lot more than I did Revson. Sure, he’s kidnapped the President and threatening to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. But Branson has panache. He has scruples. Good guy Revson is similarly jocular, always ready with a quip for those he entrusts with helping him work undercover to end the siege. But in addition to being something of a cold-blooded user, he’s just too smug. Nothing that happens in the book throws him, and that supernatural competency MacLean invests him with becomes a deadweight.
The book does have a playful quality. Everyone wisecracking like Roger Moore offers a refreshing if unrealistic break from more serious suspense yarns. But the lack of believability is matched by dearth of action throughout long sections of the book. Instead we get many drawn-out conversations and pointless expositions. The most suspenseful part of Golden Gate’s middle section gets taken up by an argument about catering services.
The most pressing question goes from “will they get away with it?” (once Revson is introduced, any element of uncertainty is quashed) to whether anyone will get killed. It sounds bloody-minded, and I don’t ever enjoy them, yet it is undeniable how a few random red-shirt and henchman deaths in other thrillers ratchet up the stakes for a reader and set up bigger payoffs. Here whatever interactions we see are nearly always polite.
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| The idea of likable hijackers was not that far-fetched. In 1973, Swedish bank robber Clark Olofsson took hostages during a bank robbery. A perceived friendliness between them gave birth to the term "Stockholm syndrome," though its authenticity is much debated. Olofsson and his hostages survived the ordeal. Image from https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-05-13-clark-olofsson-or-the-story-of-stockholm-syndrome/ |
MacLean had a tendency to avoid wanton bloodshed in his books which Branson’s qualms about killing take to another level. The little time spent on building tension is focused around the psychological toll of the situation, first on the government leaders trying to rescue their President, then on Branson trying to figure out who the “rotten apple” is among them, causing his men to disappear.
Naturally he suspects Revson, whose deep-dish smugness should give him away. But Branson just can’t bring himself to do anything about it. Because of his ethics, he won’t toss the guy off the bridge, or even send him packing. He’d rather catch Revson in the act, in order to justify his suspicions. A most uncommon criminal, indeed.
The plot itself is clever in concept, and employs a magnificent Bay Area backdrop with clear cinematic potential. But the way MacLean lets it play out is so shabby and fuddled. When Branson and his gang set things in motion, it all goes off without a hitch. When Revson begins taking action, everything he sets out to do is accomplished with ease.
At one point Revson knocks out Branson’s chief lieutenant and, on a bridge crawling with armed adversaries, lowers his unconscious body by rope over the side to a waiting submarine. In the darkness, no one notices a large rope creaking directly under them, or a submerged submarine splashing by the pilings.
It’s enjoyable fluff, with some bits of colorful detail amid the flat dialogue and grinding plot mechanics, but if no one in the book takes any of this business seriously, how can we?
MacLean produce more thrillers in a similar vein; some stupider but still fun, like Athabasca, others just irredeemably stupid, like Seawitch. This is a pleasant, ambling lark; the challenge of crafting first-class adventure fiction clearly required a more clear and focused mind than MacLean by now had to give.
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