Thunderbolt from Navarone

Guns of Navarone #4

by Sam Llewellyn

Book by Llewellyn, Sam

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Adventure, World War II, Historical Fiction, Espionage

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Sam Llewellyn is a British author of literature for children and adults.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

To begin with I am rather cross on some nincompoop who did enter the wrong information about this particular edition which is a hardcover Harper Collins publishers from 1998 and is no more than 198 pages long.

So this is perhaps the shortest story of the 4 Navarone books. To be fair the last three books had very little to do with Navarone. It only employs the Navarone survivors Captain Mallory, Colonel Andrea Stavros and corporal Miller. In Force 10 they visit Yugoslavia and blow up a dam, in Storm Force they are going after three new generation U-boat called Werewolves who would pose s serious threat to the upcoming invasion in Normandy. And this time they actually return to Greece.

While the previous book while very well written did look too much like the original book, it felt like number one book was a template or a checklist to follow.
With this book Sam Llewellyn seems to have found his rhythm in writing another great war thriller with our heros and this time they get send to Greece where on an island the Germans are working on the V4 rocket, which could alter the face of the war. But as expected the mission seems to be already blown before its started and the newer additions to the job are immediately suspect of being trouble.
An interesting bit is the addition of a baddie who did kill Stavros family before the mission on Navarone, and we find out more from the background of Miller whose days before the war seem to be spend on the bootlegging period in the US and made his mark there already.

While Sir David Niven & Edward Fox played the role of corporal Miller as quintessential British explosion expert the part in the books is an American soldier, makes you wonder why they twice chose British.

The boat that brings the Navarone team to the island gets attacked and they still manage to land and commence with chaos while balancing two separate missions, one not even their own, and play havoc with the Wehrmacht & the SS Sondercommandos who seem to be there to either hunt the assault team or protect the German solution to winning the war.

Anyhow it is a splendidly written book in which we get the enjoy the Navarone three and feels much more that this writer was let of the leash and write a fun war thriller / adventure novel. To bad there are no more stories left. I found that I quite enjoyed the adventures of Mallory, Miller & Stavros.

They make perfect vacation reading or when it is so bloody hot like we are currently "enjoying" in the Netherlands 38 degrees Celsius is really pushing it too far.

If you enjoy the writings of one of the great British thriller writers of the sixties, seventies and eighties this could be your change to continue with some of his characters who were meant to cause mayhem on the Nazis. Please vist these books in chronological order.

[Joanne Heim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuation of the three previous books about Cpt. Mallory and his team...

[Lloyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fourth book in the Navarone commando missions. It started with the much more famous Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean and has continued for an additional three books with the final two books being authored by Sam Llewellyn. As with the previous books, this story features the same three World War II commandos, Mallory, Andrea and Dusty Miller. In this fictional story they are after a “V-4” Rocket facility on a Greek island that will threaten Allied troops in Italy once it becomes operational. The many escapes our three commandos make start to become too repetitive. You don’t get the same suspense and tension by being in a difficult spot because they seem to routinely and easily escape apprehension and even death. The most tension and suspense in this book comes from the mountain and cliff climbing scenes. Fear of falling from heights does add a level of tension to this adventure.

[Vikram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although reviving Alistair MacLean's famous characters from the Navarone series, this book somehow cannot match MacLean's style and suspence. After a while, the story starts to drag... Nevertheless, it is a good attempt, at an undoubtedly difficult task...

[Vimal]

I want to reading

[Priya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another similar story with the same cast of characters in a different setting. Nothing special.

[Martin Renzhofer · Rating 3 out of 5]

After watching "The Guns of Navarone," I had an itch to read the book. Kindle offered all four Navarone books (I thought there were only two) for a small sum, so I made the leap. I will get to Thunderbolt in a moment, but I want to say that as much as I enjoyed the film, I felt the book was better (what's new). The changes made for the film were not needed. Also, the Force 10 film was bloody awful, which is what you get using a director who made his bones on the poor 1970s-80s Bond films. Thunderbolt continues the story of three fighting machines - each different in personality - bound together by trust and the will to get the job done. There is even a funny reference to the battle of Thermopylae and King Leonidas ("who played centre back"). The team is out to destroy the Nazi V3 rocket and run into the usual bit of trouble. As always, there is a traitor as well as the poor sap whose number has run out. There is plenty of humor in the face of death and even a romance with a believable conclusion. The four books, the last two by Llewellyn, are adventure/war escapism in its most tension-packed fun.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first novel that I have read by this author and I think that I will read some more of his novels.

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay follow-up to the MacLean novels.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book, but I thought it was not as good as the previous 'Navarone' books. But maybe I was suffering from an overload of adventure, this being the 4th Navarone book in some 2 weeks.