I am halfweay through a Bill Bryson book right now). With MacLean's easy understanding of the military and its technology/jargon, as well as his well-justified "a star is born" reviews, HMS Ulysses was probably the Hunt for Red October of it's day. But it is also possible that I might post my thoughts from time to time on other authors (e.g. It's lack the complex plotting of his later thrillers for which he is more famous, and doesn't have one easily identifiable lead character. Books by Alistair MacLean See the popup menu below for book reviews, sorted in order of book quality (from best to worst). Maclean was a great adventure writer but also an inconsistent one, especially toward the end of his career, and he also varied his style and subject matter quite a bit. I … This was Alistair MacLean's first book, and surprisingly (IMHO) also his best. My plan for this site is to review books, I will naturally start by reviewing the Bond novels and then move onto the Alistair MacLean works. While the idea of collecting a bunch of Alistair Maclean's adventure stories into a single volume is good in theory, it doesn't really work that well here. It's the typical "things-are-not-as-they- seem" scenario: a group of people are thrown together in a dangerous or isolated setting (in this case a weather station high up on the Greenland glacier) and someone begins to kill them off one at a time. Alistair Maclean's first dozen adventure novels were pretty good, and "Night Without End" is one of the best.