The Golden Rendezvous

LoveReading Says

MacLean was a wildly successful Scottish thriller writer who dominated the adventure genre during the 1950s and 60s. He started with three novels set during the Second World War, and then came what I think of as ‘peak MacLean’ – a magnificent run of six novels from 1959 to 1966, from The Last Frontier (The Secret Ways in the US) to When Eight Bells Toll.

All were set in contemporary times, but crucially with plot and character backstories firmly rooted in the recent wartime conflict. It was clear that wartime experience served as a permanent and automatic calibration for MacLean, in terms of peril, tension, stakes, worth and duty. I learned a lot from the patient way MacLean set up the story and sucked me in, slowly, with great self-confidence.

Often the first many pages covered actions only seconds long. His heroes tended toward a stoic, lantern-jawed archetype, but Maclean’s unique talent was to bring them to the edge of absurdity, but never let them fall off the cliff. I’m picking The Golden Rendezvous – a reluctant-hero seafaring story full of intrigue and breathless tension – but all the peak-MacLean titles are equally fantastic. A huge influence.

Comments from our Guest Editor, Lee Child

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