Seawitch

Rating:
Summary: Good enough to get you hooked on MacLean, but not his best
Review: "Seawitch" was the first Alistair MacLean book that I ever read, and it was good enough to get me hooked on him. To my delight, I discovered that most of his earlier books were even better.

The plot of "Seawitch" is a little less convoluted than typical MacLean: Lord Worth, fabulously wealthy and quite ruthless, has made a lot of enemies in the oil business because of his cutthroat attitude. His drill rig, named Seawitch, will put the final nail in the coffin of his competitors, as it will allow him to drill at will in the ocean. His competitors decide that while they hate one another, they all hate Lord Worth even more. So they hire a ruthless "troubleshooter" to fix their problem. They don't need to know how, don't even want to know how, they just want it done.

Fortunately for Lord Worth, his two daughters (one blonde, one brunette) are in love and loved by two former police detectives/now private investigators. These two guys are your usual MacLean heroes: tough, resourceful, insubordinate (which is why they are ex-police detectives), hopelessly upright. From there, it's a cat and mouse game between the two sides to see if Seawitch gets destroyed. There's a lot of sneaking around, some violence, and a satisfying climax.

Still, by 1977, when he wrote "Seawitch," MacLean was starting to lose his talent, and after this, his books range from mediocre ("Athabasca") to dreadful ("River of Death", "Partisans"). You would do yourself a favor to go back to read books MacLean wrote between 1959 and 1971, when he kicked out an amazing string of mostly Cold War thrillers, the best of which are "Ice Station Zebra," "The Golden Rendezvous," "The Black Shrike," "The Satan Bug," "Bear Island," "Puppet on a Chain," "Where Eagles Dare," and "Night Without End." Those books -- many of which were made into movies -- are tight, tension-filled, unpredictable reads.

Rating:
Summary: Good enough to get you hooked on MacLean, but not his best
Review: "Seawitch" was the first Alistair MacLean book that I ever read, and it was good enough to get me hooked on him. To my delight, I discovered that most of his earlier books were even better.

The plot of "Seawitch" is a little less convoluted than typical MacLean: Lord Worth, fabulously wealthy and quite ruthless, has made a lot of enemies in the oil business because of his cutthroat attitude. His drill rig, named Seawitch, will put the final nail in the coffin of his competitors, as it will allow him to drill at will in the ocean. His competitors decide that while they hate one another, they all hate Lord Worth even more. So they hire a ruthless "troubleshooter" to fix their problem. They don't need to know how, don't even want to know how, they just want it done.

Fortunately for Lord Worth, his two daughters (one blonde, one brunette) are in love and loved by two former police detectives/now private investigators. These two guys are your usual MacLean heroes: tough, resourceful, insubordinate (which is why they are ex-police detectives), hopelessly upright. From there, it's a cat and mouse game between the two sides to see if Seawitch gets destroyed. There's a lot of sneaking around, some violence, and a satisfying climax.

Still, by 1977, when he wrote "Seawitch," MacLean was starting to lose his talent, and after this, his books range from mediocre ("Athabasca") to dreadful ("River of Death", "Partisans"). You would do yourself a favor to go back to read books MacLean wrote between 1959 and 1971, when he kicked out an amazing string of mostly Cold War thrillers, the best of which are "Ice Station Zebra," "The Golden Rendezvous," "The Black Shrike," "The Satan Bug," "Bear Island," "Puppet on a Chain," "Where Eagles Dare," and "Night Without End." Those books -- many of which were made into movies -- are tight, tension-filled, unpredictable reads.

Rating:
Summary: Easily one of his most-readable!
Review: This book is about oil rigs and one man, Lord Worth, who owns one of the biggest, the Seawitch. To destroy it and therefore be able to inflate the price of oil, the competitors get together and send one man to deal with Lord Worth. He, unfortunately (for him, that is), has a personal score to settle with Worth and sets about kidnapping his daughters. Enter our heroes, Mitchell and Roomer, former cops and betrothed of the girls. They set about foiling the villain's plans and try and save Worth and his daughters from certain death. Why, you ask? Oh, I must have forgotten to mention that the Villain robbed a nuclear weapons armory, and that he intends to leave Worth and all his people on the rig when he destroys it with the nuclear weapon! A first-class book!