Tales from the Gryphon

Blog postings about my action/adventure books I am reading

Manoj's hackergotchi
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Sunday 13 January
2008
The Golden Gate

Posted Sunday evening, January 13th, 2008

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Yet another of Alistair Maclean screenplays pretending to be a book. Set mostly on the Golden Gate bridge, it would have made a spectacular movie. Clever plot hooks, but a almost non-existent plot line; but still, better than some action movies from that era. Chalk another one up to guilty pleasures.

Manoj

Saturday 05 January
2008
The way to dusty death

Posted late Saturday afternoon, January 5th, 2008

License: GPL

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This is one of the books that Alistair Maclean wrote when he thought he was writing screenplays, not books — very visual action, inscrutable and inhuman protagonists, improbable or missing plots, and quite entertaining in a brainless kind of way. Yup, guilty pleasures.

Manoj

Sunday 30 December
2007
Fear is the key

Posted at lunch time on Sunday, December 30th, 2007

License: GPL

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This is an old favorite from Alistair Maclean, and I’m revisiting this after some 20 odd years since the last time I read it. This books is from a time period towards the end of his good phase, and is heavier on the action and lower on plot, and the amount of suspension of disbelief is correspondingly higher than his best, but this is still very good. Perhaps I don’t like it just because it is so sad. Anyway, this is one of a set of Maclean novels I picked up recently, and some of the others are more of a guilty pleasure than this one.

Manoj