This didn't make a particularly memorable movie and it's not that good a novel - better than the movie, but I wouldn't rank it among the top tier MacLean. It has more of a female presence but before Gloria Steinem calls up with an award, the characters aren't exactly complex - a drugged out daughter of a cop, the hero cop's two hot assistants (the main reason there's two is so one can die and the other can be his reward), another druggie girl.
The atmosphere of Amsterdam is well conveyed and the action scenes are well done - there's the inevitable Maclean climbing sequence. I wasn't as wild about the poking-around-places sequences which made up the bulk of the first half.
The hero survives an awful lot of being conked on the head and captured - I was unsure how exactly he got out of two tight spots. There's some quite shocking violence - one women winds up hooked on a chain another is stabbed together by a bunch of maddies with pitchforks (this is vaguely Wicker Man territory). Last third is the best. Some decent twists with the reveal of who the baddies are, which I enjoyed even though I'd seen the film.
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