After a diving team at Wilkes Ice Station is killed, the station sends out a distress signal. A team of United States Force Recon Marines led by Shane Schofield, code named Scarecrow, arrives at the station. At the station he finds several French scientists have arrived, and several more come after the Marines' arrival. The French reveal themselves as soldiers and a fight ensues in the station, claiming the lives of Scarecrow's men Hollywood, Legs and Ratman, along with several scientists and most of the French soldiers, while Mother loses her leg, Samurai is badly injured, and two French scientists are captured. I grew up watching Ice Station Zebra on TBS, and generally anything else that station aired. When I found out that old movie was based on a novel, I had to read it. It turns out the movie was a pretty loose adaptation of the book - they even changed the names of the characters and the rescue vessel, which seems weird.

Trevor Barnaby - Brigadier of the Special Air Service who has never failed a mission. Killed by Schofield when he shoots out one of the windows of the diving bell, causing the diving bell to implode and crush Barnaby. Is involved in a final confrontation with the Antagonist and stops (or fails to stop) them carrying out their plan. All the various plot pieces revealed throughout the story were seamlessly woven together by the end, and Reilly's dastardly collection of marines, psychos and sadists were so astutely portrayed that I felt like I personally knew every one of them. Phil Taubman. Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) ISBN 0-684-85699-9 My general rule of thumb when reviewing things: I'm not giving this 4 stars in comparison to other books which might be better-written and have more heart and depth and development etc; I'm giving it 4 stars in comparison to what it's striving to be, how well it hits that marker, and how enjoyable this was to read (which was a lot).Alistair Stuart Maclean was born on 21 April 1922 in Shettleston, Glasgow, the third of four sons of a Church of Scotland minister, [3] but spent much of his childhood and youth in Daviot, 10 miles (16km) south of Inverness. He spoke Scottish Gaelic. [4] No longer my genre & while I would like to read Where Eagles Dare again, I can't imagine that I will read any of MacLean's other books. I fell in love with MacLean's books when I was about 9, and this is one of my all-time faves of his. The settings --in the sub and at the Arctic camp-- provide a tight, suspenseful framework for the story, which is itself tight & suspenseful; this is MacLean at his best. I think his most effective books are in nearly claustrophobic settings --this, the ship in "HMS Ulysses" (my vote for #1), the eponymous Bear Island, the harsh sea & barren islands in "When Eight Bells Toll." The novel exploits contemporary fascination with the under-the-ice exploits of such American nuclear-powered submarines as Nautilus (first to pass under the North Pole), Skate, Sargo and Seadragon. MacLean may have been anticipating the excitement of his British readers regarding the upcoming commissioning of HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy's first nuclear submarine. Also, MacLean may have been influenced by press reports about the nuclear-powered submarine USS Skate visiting Ice Station Alpha, located on Ice Island T-3 in the Arctic, on 14 August 1958, as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) . [2] At the time that the novel was published, under-the-ice operations by US Navy nuclear-powered submarines were prohibited until SUBSAFE measures had been implemented following the loss of USS Thresher. [3] Ebert, Roger (April 21, 1969). "Ice Station Zebra". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on October 1, 2015 . Retrieved September 30, 2015.

Alistair MacLean was one of my late Dad's favourite authors & I read many of MacLean's books when I was young. My favourite was Where Eagles Dare. I'm fairly sure I haven't read this title before. I think I would remember the plot idea, as for me it was a very original one. It’s written in a style you’ll either love or you’ll hate, with a cliff-hanger at the end of virtually every paragraph. Sometimes this heralds a meaningful event, but often it doesn’t. I didn’t mind this, it just seemed to suit the book, but I can see it could become annoying. There are, though, other elements that didn’t quite gel for me: the glib language sometimes used by participants in a deathly encounter felt straight out of a Die Hard movie and Scarecrow is granted far in excess of the nine lives normally allotted to the nimble cat. His next novels were Night Without End (1959) and Fear Is the Key (1961). The Last Frontier was turned into a movie, The Secret Ways (1961), which was not very successful, while the film version of The Guns of Navarone (1961) was hugely successful. [19] Ian Stuart [ edit ]

I drew a cross square, lines down representing the characters, lines across representing chapters 1–15. Most of the characters died, in fact only one survived the book, but when I came to the end the graph looked somewhat lopsided, there were too many people dying in the first, fifth and tenth chapters so I had to rewrite it, giving an even dying space throughout. I suppose it sounds cold blooded and calculated, but that's the way I did it. [12]

Ice Station Zebra". catalog.afi.com. Archived from the original on 2020-12-04 . Retrieved 2020-08-07.Throughout this book Reilly delivers cliff-hangers galore! The laws of science are sometimes shunted aside to make way for improbable weaponry and impossible situations, but that's just part of the fun. The spy element is rather limited. Carpenter is obviously a British spy from the start. The murderers are Soviet spies. Their motive is spy-related, but Maclean only reveals it in the second to last chapter and it’s a MacGuffin (e.g. it could be anything, it has no direct plot relevance). Maclean describes Carpenter as being in ‘MI6 counter espionage’. Of course, there is no such thing, as that’s the role of MI5. I like the military style-font here, the hunched figures in the centre dwarfed by the submarine, which is itself lost in the ice and facing an oncoming blizzard. MacLean died of heart failure [56] at the age of 64 in Munich on 2 February 1987; his last years were affected by alcoholism. [57] According to one obituary, "A master of nail-chewing suspense, MacLean met an appropriately mysterious death; when he died in the Bavarian capital after a brief illness, no one, including the British Embassy, knew what he was doing there." [2] [58] [57] Personal life [ edit ]

a b Norman, Barry (2003). And Why Not?: Memoirs of a Film Lover. NY: Simon and Schuster. pp.211–14. ISBN 978-0684020884 . Retrieved 11 April 2017. Kastner produced a film version of When Eight Bells Toll (1971), based on a script by MacLean, and Fear Is the Key (1972), adapted by another writer. [39] Another producer made Puppet on a Chain (1971), directed by Reeves, from a script by MacLean. [40] Neither performed particularly strongly at the box office. [41] Mary MacLean [ edit ] There are surprises and of course there are people who aren't what they appear, aka spies, which drives the final half of the novel to a very satisfying conclusion. Particularly frightening was a fire on the sub. When they arrive at Ice Station Zebra it has been destroyed by fire. There are eleven injured survivors in one hut. His niece Shona MacLean (also published under S.G. Maclean) is a writer and historical novelist. [60]

Tigerfish completes the rescue of the civilians. A teletype machine reports the news that the "humanitarian mission" has been an example of better cooperation between the West and the Soviet Union. John Carpenter Interview". www.oocities.org. Archived from the original on 2020-10-23 . Retrieved 2020-08-07. The story, even after over half a century, is still very suspenseful and thrilling. To quote a contemporary Maclean's writing style was "hit 'em with everything but the kitchen sink, then give 'em the sink, and when they raise their heads, drop the plumber on 'em" ... and it works. There are plenty of memorable characters to empathise with as they are thrown into intolerable situations that somehow keep getting worse.