Fear is the Key - Alistair MacLean

An appropriately manly book for Clint Eastwood's Birthday Day.

The story starts with a plane fleeing a Latin American country on the verge of revolution. It carried two cargoes, but they're both lost when the plane's mysteriously shot down.

From there, MacLean jumps some undetermined amount of time forward to a trial for a man named Talbot. He didn't produce identification when the cops asked, and hospitalized a couple of them when they insisted. The situation gets worse when he shoots of them and escapes the courthouse with a young woman as his hostage. He escapes the cops, but ends up under the thumb of a odd group consisting of a general, a killer, a junkie, and a would-be Mista Big, who have some need of Talbot.

MacLean builds things slowly at first. I was reading in 50-page bursts, and for the first fifty, it was hard to tell what the connection between the prologue and everything with Talbot was. The next 50 pages aren't exactly thrilling, but they neatly answer that question and set the table for the rest of the book. From there, it's a question of whether Talbot can keep pulling the wool over everyone's eyes long enough, whether the people's he's trusting to help actually can.

That's where the tension comes. There's little doubt there's going to be a dramatic confrontation, but it's up in the air who'll have control when it happens. Is it going to be on Talbot's terms, or on theirs? MacLean treads a good line in how Talbot puts forth a certain face for these guys, while also projecting a level of confidence he doesn't necessarily feel. Things start to go wrong very early, and though Talbot acts like it's still going according to plan, he's aware how big a chance he's taking and how far out in the wind he is.

The end is more talkative than I would have expected, but it doesn't feel out of place. Once it's clear what Talbot's stake was, the exposition is a mixture of catharsis and triumph. MacLean makes it work, at any rate. That said, he could stand to cut back on the adverb usage. I'm not one of the people who advocates using no adverbs, but MacLean can't help himself. He piles them on, making long sentences even longer and breaking the flow of the story.

'"You never knew, did you, Vyland, that someone was in radio contact with that plane just before it was shot out of the sky. But I was. Just for two minutes, Vyland." I looked at him slowly, consideringly, emptily. "Two little minutes that mean you die tonight."'