This is more of an author review than an individual books review.  There will be a brief note at the end specifically related to each book but the star ratings will give an indication of my feelings. Alistair Maclean is a popular author. I love some of his books but others I just could not get away with. Generally his writing is can be good and his characters are decent. But there are some recurring  problems.  One is his insistence on writing some of these thrillers in the first person. Now this is personal thing here but I find first person a strange choice for thrillers. There doesn't seem the same sense of threat to characters when they are telling the story... it's not as if they are going to die as they wouldn't be telling the story then! It can work and other authors are adept at it. Maclean isn't always as good at achieving it. First person also sometimes spoils the flow of a story. For example in satan bug instead of actually starting the book showing an attack on a laboratory,  Maclean's hero after arriving at the laboratory, imagines what happens and tells another character. It's poorly written and a third person style would have been far more effective. Then there is a recurring big reveal. Quite a few of his books have the surprise reveal that the hero is actually an undercover agent/policeman/etc which is fine but gets a bit silly after happening in so many books and in some cases is even more silly due to them having high profile jobs. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed several books that had that type of reveal but the key to that enjoyment was the story itself.  There are unfortunately several books that have very poor plots and characters,  there are more good than bad but there are still a fair few poor ones. His wartime stories are definitely his strongest fair with a few exceptions.  There are also some very good modern (at the time they were written) books. I didn't like all of his books but I liked enough to say he is an author worth exploring.  And you may enjoy different ones to me. If you try Maclean and like him... that's great. This was another enjoyable wartime story. The plot and characters are good.