RogerBW's Blog

The Guns of Navarone, Alistair MacLean 29 March 2017

1957 thriller/war story. The island of Navarone, off the Turkish coast, contains a set of naval guns in a rock fortress that can't be effectively bombed, surrounded by a massive occupation force. Two sabotage missions have failed, one by boat, one by parachute. It's time for the third.

And the way to do it is to climb the "unclimbable" cliffs, so it's a good thing the Allies can lay their hands on Keith Mallory, who was a famous mountaineer before he became a covert operator. Four men go in with Mallory: the young and enthusiastic British climber who thinks he's a coward, the hard-bitten American adventurer, the SBS radio operator, and Andrea, the Greek resistance fighter and the only one Mallory has worked with before.

It's very noticeable how much this diverges from the more modern thriller style: even when the immediate enemy is the Nazis rather than the environment, the struggles are less about gun battles and more about getting into a position where one side's victory is sufficiently assured that the other side might as well surrender. The situation is set up so that it makes sense just to send this small team (warships would need to use searchlights to find the guns and would be cut to pieces before they could get on target; bombers have to approach down a narrow corridor full of flak, and there's a big rock overhang; the garrison guards all the approaches that a sensible attacker might use); many later authors wouldn't apply the same amount of care, but that's in part because the trope is so solidly established here that it came to seem like the natural way of doing things.

The mission is more clearly divided into sections than in many other stories: crossing the sea, climbing the cliffs, getting across the high country to the fortress, and finally getting inside to do the sabotage and then escaping. There's opposition at every turn, and not everyone will be coming home again.

With a smaller cast than HMS Ulysses required, there's more room for characterisation; these are stock types that MacLean would re-use, but they're done well. There's the hero who's always thought one more step ahead than the enemy has; the physically tough sidekick; the close ally who turns out to be a villain. Viewpoint and narration drift among the characters, and perhaps they're a bit too prone to give speeches while the bad guys are breaking down the door.

Not all the Nazis are bad guys; in particular there's an Alpenkorps Oberleutnant who would probably have been Mallory's friend had the war not happened. Obviously we spend less time with the opposition than with the team, but even the enemy and incidental characters manage to be slightly individual.

Major Rutledge of the Buffs, Eton and Sandhurst as to intonation, millimetrically tooth-brushed as to moustache, Savile Row as to the quite dazzling sartorial perfection of his khaki drill, was so magnificently out of place in the wild beauty of the rocky, tree-lined bluffs of that winding creek that his presence there seemed inevitable. Such was the Major's casual assurance, so dominating his majestic unconcern, that it was the creek, if anything, that seemed slightly out of place.

Followed, in a way and some time later, by Force 10 From Navarone.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1