GUNS OF NAVARONE

by Alistair MacLean ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 1956

MacLean is a natural born adventure story teller, and this measures up to H.M.S. Ulysses and again has that extraordinary quality of participation. You feel that MacLean was there, though this has none of the journalistic authenticity of the earlier book, but is straight adventure with a wartime setting, told at an intimate level of interpretation of character. The setting is unusual. A careful selected handful of men, expert in their particular fields, has been brought together and given an assignment which had already defeated the Commandoes, the bombers, the cruisers of the British. The goal- the silencing of powerful, strategically placed guns on an island controlling the approach to one of the few islands still held by the British in the eastern Mediterranean. That island was on the German agenda; the time was close and there were 1200 men garrisoned there. The guns must be silenced. There was only one break in the defense- a sheer cliff 400 feet high. And five men were assigned to scale it, to penetrate the fortress, to destroy the guns. One gets to know the five men, to share the mounting tension and terror, to credit the incredible because of the characters of the participants. MacLean has many of the Buchan attributes. S.P.P. serial.

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 1956

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1956

Categories: FICTION