Puppet On A Chain – Alistair MacLean, 1969 ★★★

 A Nastier Sort of Thrill Ride

Alistair MacLean knew how to write exciting adventure stories. Deep into the second decade of his bestselling career, he had it down to a formula. Kick things off with a deadly encounter in chapter one, keep raising the odds in every chapter, and never let up on the wisecracks.

Interpol agent Paul Sherman just arrived in Amsterdam. Before he can even leave Schiphol Airport he has already witnessed the gunning down of his main contact, been knocked half-unconscious by an assassin, tangled with a mysterious woman, and clashed with local authorities who can’t believe he’s a lawman.

Athabasca – Alistair MacLean, 1980 ★½

A Thriller on the Rocks

What can you say about a thriller where everything happens at once and an invisible adversary manages to be everywhere and nowhere?

Athabasca is a novel driven by a need to exceed. Not so much in thrills, but in scale. What starts out as a scenic visit by security experts to discuss a possible threat at the mouth of the Alaska Pipeline quickly escalates into a deadly, fiery crisis that draws in a second mammoth oil-extraction operation thousands of miles away.

For this trio of intrepid, overweight investigators led by the smug, loquacious Jim Brady, big explosions, mutilated bodies, and shadowy terrorists are all secondary to how long their booze supply holds up.

The Devil’s Alternative – Frederick Forsyth, 1979 ★★★½

Doomsday on the North Atlantic

While the world keeps turning on the same axis, old problems persist. Back in 1979, subjects of popular dread included Russo-Ukrainian conflict, high seas piracy and a world on the brink of environmental catastrophe.

They even wrote best-selling thrillers about them.

After a five-year break, spy fiction master Frederick Forsyth was back with a twist. This time he was Tom Clancy, even though it was the 1970s and no one had heard of Clancy yet. The Devil’s Alternative is a Cold War cliffhanger set on a global scale with a variety of players conducting their own intrigues that feed into the overall plot.

Where Eagles Dare – Alistair MacLean, 1967 ★★★★

Gunplay in a Lighter Vein

It took awhile to appreciate one of the great adventure novels of its day. I think I get it now. A masterclass of immersive yarnspinning, Where Eagles Dare is a clever plate-spinner emphasizing fun and thrills at every turn, a game writer’s playful take on the wartime thriller.

Does it help or hurt this book that it was made into a classic movie? After years of struggling with this question, and preferring the film, I have reached the happy conclusion that the book is its own thing, quite a different sort of entertainment, and all the better for it.

Reality takes a holiday as commandos banter over gunfire while implausible ploys find ways of succeeding in the end, but for me this time, it comes back to the plate-spinning. Alistair MacLean defies gravity and logic across 219 pages, and I found myself enjoying the ride.

The Golden Gate – Alistair MacLean, 1976 ★½

Hijackers with Manners

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 execute 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 Dogs Of War – Frederick Forsyth, 1974 ★

A Thriller That Never Thrills

You know things are going bad when a book is down to its last few pages and that big attack built up since chapter two still hasn’t come.

Will our mercenary protagonists drown before making landfall in the tiny African nation whose government they are trying to overthrow? Will they run afoul of Soviets or the conniving capitalists who put them up? Will they ditch their assignment and make off with the loot?

At risk of spoilers, no, no, and no. What happens instead is a white-knuckle journey to nowhere. After much bump and grind, Frederick Forsyth lamely drops us off with a shrug. Dogs Of War is more than a disappointment; it is a brush-off.

The Odessa File – Frederick Forsyth, 1972 ★★★★

The Humane One

Introducing his first three novels in a 1980 omnibus edition, Frederick Forsyth called The Odessa File “the humane one,” to distinguish it from the pure craft of his debut and a nastier tone in his third novel.

More than 40 years later, I don’t think anyone has summed up Odessa File nearly as well. It is a very humane sort of thriller, all the more involving and exciting for that.

Take one modern fellow trying to right a terrible wrong, throw in a terror plot that realistically threatens an entire nation, and incorporate a knowledge of politics, bureaucracy, and automotive mechanics, and you have another Forsyth winner, but with more than a bit of heart this time.

The Day Of The Jackal – Frederick Forsyth, 1971 ★★★★★

Making a Tutorial out of a Debut

Genre fiction is easy to take for granted; when you pick up a thriller or a spy novel, you expect a certain kind of experience. It’s not about becoming a better person or learning something; it’s about satisfaction.

But when a novel delivers consistently in just about every facet: suspense, structure, logic, atmosphere, climax; and does so in a way that elevates the form, you need to take a step back and ask: How did he do it?

At least that’s what I do every time I finish reading this masterpiece.

When Eight Bells Toll – Alistair MacLean, 1966 ★★½

Requiem for an Airport Thriller

If Alistair MacLean isn’t the godfather of that once-popular genre known as “airport fiction,” then he is at least a capo in high esteem.

For decades, people – mostly male business travelers – picked up MacLean novels with a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes in preparation for a long flight or train ride. These books featured garish covers where lean, muscular men fired machine guns in front of impressive explosions. For a pre-teen like me, they offered a glance at the world where I liked to imagine adults really lived.

As a thriller writer, MacLean was not subtle. But he was effective.

Up Country – Nelson DeMille, 2002 ★½

Back in Nam

Up Country is a thriller with few thrills, a cross-country jaunt that goes nowhere and sets up a finale that lands flat as a pancake after 700 pages.

Nelson DeMille had the craft to deliver much better. God knows he had more experience to draw upon than he wanted.

Paul Brenner is a retired U. S. Army investigator summoned back into service in 1997 to solve a 29-year-old crime committed during the height of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. A Tet veteran himself, Brenner overcomes much reluctance to journey back to the land where he lost both his innocence and many comrades, a nation with its own deep wounds and a marked ambivalence about Americans.

No Comebacks – Frederick Forsyth, 1982 ★★★★

Forsyth in a Different Vein

Why didn’t Frederick Forsyth become the biggest name in thriller writing?

This short-story collection, published toward the end of a great run of commercial and critical success, posits the idea that while forging an approach to his genre others like Ludlum and Clancy would pursue more diligently (if with less talent) what Fred really wanted was to be O. Henry.

People who picked up No Comebacks in the spring of 1982 expecting ten quick doses of the sort of top-notch thriller writing Forsyth had been producing since 1971’s The Day Of The Jackal (which continued up through 1984’s The Fourth Protocol, his last great novel) were disappointed. I know I was. A few stories offer suspense of this kind, but the overall body count is low and tension is of a more everyday variety.