Santorini

by Alistair MacLean

An eighty-foot yacht suddenly capsizes in the Aegean, leaving only six survivors. Then, minutes later, in the same area, an unidentified four-engine jet crashes into the sea. Are these twin disasters more than coincidence?
Commander Talbot and the crew of the HMS Ariadne are assigned to retrieve from the ocean floor the jet's volatile atomic and hydrogen weaponry with the force to destroy millions. As the delicate operation proceeds, Talbot finds himself trapped in a whirl of nightmarish events involving terrorism and drugs -- and a diabolic plot that leads straight to the Pentagon.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Adventure, Action, Espionage, Mystery, Suspense

276 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1986

About the author

Alistair Stuart MacLean (Scottish Gaelic: Alasdair MacGill-Eain), the son of a Scots Minister, was brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Royal Navy; two and a half years spent aboard a cruiser were to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a schoolmaster. In 1983, he was awarded a D. Litt. from the same university.

Maclean is the author of twenty-nine world bestsellers and recognised as an outstanding writer in his own genre. Many of his titles have been adapted for film - The Guns of the Navarone, The Satan Bug, Force Ten from Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and Bear Island are among the most famous.

Reviews

[R J Royer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13158807

Though outdated and full of references that make me feel like a very old man, I enjoyed reading this rather fast paced novel. Reminiscent of "The Hunt for Red October" and novels like those this made me think of something I had never considered before, a nuclear mine for the sea ways.

I will say that I am glad that the book takes place where and when it does because now I can only imagine how much worse it could be if something like this book actually happened and I do believe that it could.

[Bill Riggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

A luxury yacht burns and sinks at the same time and place that a high flying jet burns and crashes into the sea. An intriguing thriller/mystery with a potentially world ending twist.

[Sportyrod · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my second favourite Maclean action book, out of two…this one involved a bomber that crashed into the sea off Santorini, a sinking yacht owned by a wealthy businessman, and a navy ship. Why did it crash? What was it carrying? Who is behind it?

Most of the book was dialogue which made for quick reading. The characters were fine. The plot was a bit slow. Like a ticking bomb trying to be de-activated but for 3/4s of the story. A lot of intricate clues went above my head as they were nautical or involved naval engineering or electronic knowledge, of which I have none.

The finalé was a reflection of times gone by. To “save-the-day” or “save-the-world” only extended to the humans in it. The environment was less of a consideration.

I give this book 2.5 stars rounded down a little harshly, due to my lack of pre-requisite knowledge. Having said that, the cover and blurb on the back delivered exactly on what it said it would, so it’s more user error than any lack of explanation. I have a bundle of more Maclean books at home, so fingers crossed.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, considering it was the last book he wrote before he passed away the following year, and chronologically it was right after my favorite book as a kid San Andreas, written by himself. Alas--I was disappointed. The story itself was rock solid and a page turner, yet somehow he wrote dialogue that was so dated and repetitive it was hard to slog through. This book took forever for me to read because yet again, no first names were used, only ranks usually, so hard to figure out who was talking; and when they did talk they would go on for paragraphs repeating everything they had just said. It could have been so much better and tighter in my opinion.

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow...MacLean's last, and — at least of the many I've read — indisputably his worst; sad note to go out on. Granted, 1969's Puppet on a Chain is widely seen as his last "good" book...so nearly two decades before this one. But yeah; style, plot, voice, just everything so far below what I grew up with. In just the first three pages we get convoluted, commo-heavy sentences like these:

"The Sixth Fleet, Talbot was aware, would have informed him of the presence of any of their aircraft in his vicinity, not from courtesy but because regulations demanded it, a fact of which O'Rourke was as well aware as he was."

"This was a combined telescope and camera, invented and built by the French, of the type used by spy satellites in orbit, which was capable, under ideal atmospheric circumstances, of locating and photographing a white plate from an altitude of two hundred and fifty miles."

…and then the whole thing is downhill from there. There is literally NO action here; NO tension, NO real mystery to solve...there's not even a main character, just a cast of dozens who speak — endlessly — in identical, comma-heavy voices. Indeed, the whole thing is almost all captain's cabin, upper deck or even White House "tell, don't show" dialogue (or often monologue), so that it feels more like the script for a very boring drawing room play than an actual novel, with new characters randomly and briefly appearing to deliver their expository lines in an "oh look, here comes our cryptographer/nuclear scientist/FBI director now!" kind of way. And don't get me started on the ending, which was not only frankly stupid but also telegraphed nearly 200 pages in advance, and so not so much surprising as just long overdue.

And okay, mea culpa; I knew going in this couldn't actually be good…but I also have a personal fondness for the island of Santorini, as that was where our family took its last vacation before relocating back home after a continuous 11 years abroad. Except even the Santorini connection is a total (and extremely lazy) MacGuffin — the story in fact takes place 100% at sea and just vaguely in the vicinity of the island, just so that they can amp up the threat level because "a nuclear explosion near Santorini would have untold consequences because there is both volcanic activity AND shifting tectonics here, so…AAGGHHHH!!" Either that, or the publishers chose this title because the mere fact that the book takes place near a beautiful island is the most interesting thing about the whole damn story.

Anyway, probably the only way to get rid of the stank of this last and worst book is to (eventually) reread MacLean's first and best, the also-set-at-sea and genuinely classic HMS Ulysses.
___________________________________

(This is the fifth of a half dozen or so used/cheap "read and toss" books brought along on my current trip back to Taipei — not even sure why this was on my bookshelf to begin with, other than the above "Santorini" connection and the fact that it almost certainly cost less than a buck…)

[Edmond Gagnon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've seen the movies, Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, that were based on Alistar MacLean's books, but never actually read one.
His subject material is well researched and the story is good, but I felt the dialogue was overloaded with supposition and conjecture.
Overall it was a good read.

[Robert Jenkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the past couple of years I've read all of Alistair MacLean's books in chronological order ( I'd previously read most of them back in the 1980's). So it was with a bit of wistfulness that I took up this one, the last novel he wrote before passing away in 1987. It's well known among MacLean readers that his last few books didn't really compare to his earlier works. I was hoping this would be an exception. And it does have a pretty decent beginning with a simultaneous plane crash and yacht sinking in the Aegean Sea near a conveniently-placed British ship. However, things get slow soon thereafter. The book is almost completely characters sitting around talking with just a few dollops of action, mostly concerned with exploring the sunken yacht and raising the crashed plane (which is loaded with a rather nasty cargo) to shake things up a bit.

Of course, you need villains in a novel like this, and they are present here. However, the good guys figure their scheme out almost immediately and the bad guys never really have a chance to get away with it, though they think they do. Essentially, the main villain is supposed to be a high-powered international drug smuggler and all-around evil mastermind but he really comes across as a rather gullible fool. Not MacLean's best characterization.

Another thing that is distracting from the book is that everyone, whether Greek, American, or the President of the U.S., talks and acts British. MacLean does not do a good job of making his characters act like their nationality. In fairness, that was a problem in many of his other books as well.

Overall, I can't recommend this to someone new to MacLean, but someone who has read more of his books might enjoy it more. If you're interested in Alistair MacLean, I recommend HMS Ulysses, South By Java Head, The Guns of Navarone, Night Without End, The Black Shrike, The Golden Rendezvous, Ice Station Zebra, and Breakheart Pass first. You won't be disappointed in any of these. Really though, anything he wrote before about 1975 or so is superior to anything after that.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read ‘Night Without End’ and ‘Ice Station Zebra’ back to back and thoroughly enjoyed both, I figured I’d tackle ‘Santorini’. And, folks, it almost broke me. Set aboard a British naval vessel in the Aegean, and weaving a needlessly labyrinthine plot involving four different ships, nuclear weapons, terrorism, financial chicanery and international politics, it ought to be a rip-roaring thriller of the highest order. Except that MacLean delivers every set-piece, every narrative development and every bit of characterisation (such as it is) as a series of conversations. In other words, instead of describing a tense salvage operation or the dirty dealings of the antagonists, he has his characters sit around in ships’ cabins discussing what happened *after the event*. Not only that, but his dialogue is tin-eared in the extreme. Thus a 220-page novel lumbers interminably toward a damp-squib denouement. I know that I still have some sub-standard MacLean to come - I recall ‘Floodgate’ and ‘Partisans’ being sluggish - but I really hope the tedium of ‘Santorini’ is the worst of it.

[Veeral · Rating 2 out of 5]

MacLean's last book and perhaps his most boring. You won't miss anything if you give this book a pass.

If you want to read Maclean, there are dozens of his better books out there.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been well over twenty years since I last read this novel. I read it on a whim, and enjoyed the reading. It had a decent plot; the basic plot is one that the author [and many others like him] has recycled over and over and over. It moved at a decent pace, I guess. It had a lot of 'talking' and not a lot of 'doing' [action] in it. The character development is so-so, I guess. Characters are introduced, but there are so many characters that there is not much room for any kind of development. It is your 'basic' kind of story in that there is some kind of catastrophe [or accident] involving some kind of advanced weapons-technology. A widget is required for the recovery operation, only the ally is unwilling to relinquish control of the widget. Eventually, the widget is shared, treachery in high places is uncovered, and 'justice' finally prevails in the end.

One thing that stood out to me, though, was a conversation between the British Ambassador to the United States and the President. The President believes he must 'come clean' and 'air the dirty laundry' of what has happened for all the world to see in regard to the high-ranking treachery. The British Ambassador states that this airing of dirty laundry is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. He also goes on to give some decent examples of why this is the case. I thought it was an excellent argument, that not EVERYTHING, EVERY government mistake, needs to be revealed in the press. People most assuredly do NOT have a 'right' to 'know everything' in intimate detail. It is not necessary; it can also be dangerous to individuals when some things are revealed. Invariably, the press only gives a limited side of what they are covering and how they present the story to the general population [especially, it seems, when politics become involved]. The 'issue' of the two high-ranking traitors is quickly and quietly resolved, without any fanfare.

Oddly enough, the character with the most development is the villain of the piece. He is introduced exhibiting some odd behavior, and the Royal Navy officers eventually discover his criminal background as well as how wealthy he is. We end up learning more about him than any other character in the book, which means he has the most character development. The RN captain calls him [the 'main villain'] a 'mad dog,' and rightly so. The final solution is quite final indeed.

Despite the lack of 'action' in the book, it still moved at a good pace. There were some 'odd jumps' where the scenario would abruptly change between the RN vessel and the White House; that was a bit jarring. It seems like he as done a better job bouncing between locales in other stories.

It did seem like, at times, he had characters repeating each other. The amount of dialogue could probably have been significantly reduced if many of the repetitive comments were to be removed, or restated so that reference is made to the prior conversation and then moving on from there, as very little 'new' information seemed to be added with subsequent conversations about the same material.

His books are always interesting to read, because despite the amount of testosterone he tries to instill in his books, the hero rarely 'gets the girl' during the course of the book. There is very little if any romance, in this book. I do not think it detracts from the book; it is just interesting how romance [or seduction] rarely factors into his stories.


Overall, it was still a fun read. Despite its failings and whatnot, I still enjoyed it.

[Loaves And · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of characters to keep track of. Suspense. Intrigue. International involvement

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've wanted to get back to Alistair MacLean for a number of years now and just haven't done it. Admittedly, this particular MacLean novel may not have been the best place to start. Reportedly, it is the last novel he wrote and was published just a year before his death.

"Santorini" is the name of a small island off the coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea. The plot seems a little backward for what one would expect from a mystery/thriller. By that I mean, we pretty much know what is going on and who are the bad guys very early on and so there is never much suspense building up. I kept wondering how things would change up and show that what we thought was happening was really happening at all. But no change. It's a more cerebral MacLean book than I remember from the handful of other books I've read by him. That would be OK but the style and the plot seemed ho hum and lacked energy.

Another thing I noticed: too often, the protagonists seemed smug and fully confident that they had anticipated and defused any threats from the bad guys. Annoying and it made it hard to route for them in some scenes.

But even with these negative observations, I still enjoyed the book overall. But the next one I read of his will be one of his earlier works, usually regarded as his better stuff.

[John Pringle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to have been reading a lot of Alistair MacLean novels recently. Every time I come to the end of one of his books, I immediately want to start another. In the case of Santorini, MacLean’s last novel, I liked the premise and the pacing was good, but there weren’t many twists and turns or big moments and the ending was slightly anti-climactic. Like some of his other books, I had a hard time differentiating the characters. This novel, in particular, relies heavily on dialogue and, frankly, all the characters sound the same—the Greek and even the President come over as distinctly British. The villains could certainly have done with being a bit more villainous.

I read in an article in The New York Times that it would take MacLean little more than a month to complete a book. I don’t know if that applies to all his books or just the later ones. I’m assuming only the later ones. Santorini feels like it was written hurriedly and it could definitely have benefitted from an extra month to polish it up. Nevertheless, for all its faults, the fact that I finished it shows that MacLean on an off-day is still worth reading.

[Christopher Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is MacLean's second to last novel, written late in his career. MacLean really should be rediscovered, as he wrote an amazing array of political thrillers of which several made it to movies (Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra for example). If you like Tom Clancy type books, you'll love MacLean.

Santorini is a tale of nuclear weapons, espionage, terrorism, and a somewhat Bondian villain involving the British Navy. I found this less effective than previous books by MacLean because he seems to have fallen into a sort of comfortable pattern of characterization. Previous novels were much more sharp with distinct character personalities, but everyone in the book, including the Americans and Greeks all seemed to be clones of Richard Burton from Where Eagles Dare (also a MacLean book). I could practically hear him reading the lines.

However, despite that and a few technical errors, this was a tight thriller that was satisfying and kept my interest as well as his early novels.

[Wade Grassman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ever since I gave up reading “children’s books” (some time in the early 1970’s) I’ve been a huge fan of Alistair MacLean. Sadly, this, his last novel, is not his best work. Santorini is a good book, but it fails to live up to MacLean’s, admittedly high, standards.
One the salient features of a MacLean novel is that you really never know who is who and what side they are on, in this book, that doesn’t happen.

Not holding it up to MacLean’s other works the book is very entertaining. It would be defined as a techno-thriller today, though the technology is rather dated. If you lived through the times of the story, the late ’80’s, it sort of a trip down memory lane. A quaint and very dated story of terrorists hijacking a nuclear device.

[Kevin Ettery · Rating 2 out of 5]

Santorini was ok, but I got the distinct impression that someone else had written it, as the style was so different.
In the normal MacLean book you start with a mystery, and the hero of the book progresses through gaining the odd fact or clue here and there. The suspense is maintained until, at the end, all the various clues come together and the reader realises "Oh yeah, thats who the bad guys are!".
In Santorini there is an initial mystery, but there is no opportunity for suspense to really build - when a smaller problem/mystery comes up the solution is wheeled out within the chapter (or close enough), and, when you get to the end of the book, the reader is left with the impression "Is THAT all?".
The book just lacks the tension and punch of his other books.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recall reading a lot of MacLean's books as a teenager. He has the typical thriller style of highly effective military types, a well oiled machine of slightly quirky super men that can defeat anything they come across.

Santorini is no different. Its a little dry towards the end, with a gizmo solving the small difficulty the team gets into at the end. And the setting seems hardly used... there's little about the island itself, except a quick throwaway line about a cliff road to a port.

But, its tightly and economically written. The story gets along, there's a rwist or two to keep you alert, and nothing gets tied up within itself. Its not cutting edge, but it does what you expect from a old hand at the genre.

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Santorini is Alistair MacLean's final novel. It is not particularly original. Much of the plot is also predictable. It has elements that resemble The Back Shrike and Golden Rendezvous. It also has the terrorist elements of many of his later books. As usual, the characters are one dimensional.

I elected to re-read Santorini because I remembered almost nothing. It is actually a better novel than I remember. Not brilliant, but not his worst story.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A luxury yacht sinks in the Mediterranian at the same time a high flying airplanes crashes near the sight with a load of nuclear weapons. One of the weapons becomes armed over an underseas volcano. Commander Talbot of the British spy ship, HMS Ariadne, must determine if the yacht's survivors are responsible while trying to disarm and recover the weapons before the bomb explodes.

[Brian Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing effort from Mr MacLean, consisting mostly of dialogue.
A plane crashes near the spy ship Ariadne, at the same time as they receive a distress call from a yacht.
There then follows a whole bunch of talking, second guesses (all of which seem to be right) and a rather lacklustre finish.

[Uday Saripalli · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst story from my all time favorite story teller. The story never takes off, the nail biting suspense, so much a hallmark of Alistair Maclean novels, is totally missing. A bland and totally predictable storyline. I suppose the strain of writing the 28 novels before Santorini finally caught up with Mr. Maclean!

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Alistair MacLean books, but this one just didn't grab me. Got lost in the pile of other books to read. I think this is one of his later ones, and it was full of too-clever dialogue and not much action.

[Roshni · Rating 4 out of 5]

MacLean produces another fantastic thriller. This naval adventure makes you hold your breath with a potential to blow up half the world. But the indomitable heroes leave everything to the last minute and eventually save the day.

[Greer Andjanetta · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent story, well written with MacLean's typical crisp style with good English and vocabulary and no wasted words of philosophy or dogma. A quality of writing not seen too often these days, reminiscent of Nevil Shute or Hammond Innes. Very enjoyable read!

[Sudheer Madhava · Rating 2 out of 5]

Re-reading this book after a long long time. Predictably boring adventure on the seas, full of classic English stereotypical sailor characters and mediterranean baddies. Not in the same class as either HMS Ulysses or even Fear Is The Key. Strictly for highschool anglophiles.

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this is your first Alistair MaClean book, don't read it, rather read a different one. If you like Him as an author, don't read it at all. I was very disappointed, I couldn't believe that it was the same author that wrote HMS Ulysses, Where Eagles Dare, etc,

[Alistaire King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately , as this was Alistair MacLeans' last book, it is arguably his weakest. The elements are all there but somehow they just don't gel. Very little in the way of action and the end carries little impact.

[Lenny Husen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Rounding down because there is nothing to say to recommend this book.
Wasn't terrible, just boring. Too many characters. Slow plot. I love MacLean and was
glad to finally finish this book.

[Britt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense

Another reread, I love these stories. Lots of twists and turns and thrills. Appreciated Vincent and Denholm and Captain Talbot. Lots of things in play here - would make a grand movie!

[Brett]

Suspense