Book review - MacLean#3 - "South by Java Head" by Alistair MacLean (1958) (warning: spoilers)

From MacLean's great period - excellently written, exciting, gruelling. I sometimes got lost exactly what was happening - I'm not great on nautical descriptions -  and how many people were on the run ("people fleeing the baddies" stories tend to work better when it's a small tight group) but it's very good.

The characters really suffer - they're on one ship, it sinks just as they get on another ship, which sinks, so they get on a lifeboat, which takes them to an island, they sink it, get captured, get on another boat, it sinks, they get captured. People go crazy drinking salt water, there's suicide bombings, strafings.

Rather oddly MacLean gives us the Macguffin up front (plans to the invasion of Australia!) - there are also diamonds later on, but really the plans are the Big Deal. I wonder if the first chapter was added later on at the request of publishers or something because it doesn't feature the true hero , Nicholson.

I read Alec Guinness was meant to star in a film version. I'm not surprised a film wasn't made - most of the action takes place on water, it would be expensive. At first I recoiled about Guiness as this tough, ultra efficient boat officer but as the book went on, reading it, I could imagine Guinness playing it, with his sense of un-worldiness.

There are a lot of characters and at times I forgot who was who. Conversely, the lead characters are among MacLean's most memorable - the blimpish officer who turns out to be a cool shot and ruthlessly efficient agent, the nanny who is his wife, the reveal of the German agent (didn't pick it).

There is an unpleasant strand of racism through the book - I know this was typical of the time, but there's none of the empathy shown to Commies and Nazis in other MacLean novels. The Japanese are efficient and ruthless - and one, an officer, is so sadistic, keen to torture women and kids, that the German agent changes sides. And there's a Malay who is treacherous at the start and continues to be so. The nice non whites are friendly villagers. So there's that.