Customer Reviews

Alistair MacLean's Night Watch

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"Alistair MacLean's Night Watch" was actually penned by Alastair MacNeill, working from a novel outline left by MacLean at his death. MacLean is best known in the United States for "Where Eagle Dare" and "The Guns of Navarone." The storyline of "Night Watch" is vintage MacLean, with a complicated plot and lots of dangerous action on an international scale. This novel continues with the cast of U.N. secret agents introduced in "Death Train."

The genesis of the plot is the clever theft of the Rembrandt painting "NIght Watch." The U.N. agents assigned to secure its recovery soon find themselves involved in a series of overlapping international intrigues, their mission threatened by personal conflicts and unforeseen challenges. For those of us who miss Alistair MacLean, "Night Watch" is like diet soda, a reasonably refreshing and serviceable copy of MacLean's writing style from his later years. MacNeill keeps the action moving along smartly and throws in more than enough exotic detail and locales to keep up reader interest. The twists and turns last to the very last page. That said, MacNeill is not quite a master of MacLean's understated ironic humor and precise use of language. The dialogue in particular is occasionally awkward.

This book is recommended to the reader looking for a good adventure story. The plot is fast moving and complicated enough to be easily a step above the average beach novel.

A novel in the series about a UNACO strike force. In this one the action takes place in South America and involves drug lords, spies and loads of other detective-story types. The action is mostly fast-paced, quite intriguing, with a few interesting plot twists. Very similar to other MacLean stories that were completed by Alistair MacNeil, such as "Night Of The Assasins" and "Death Train".

"Night Watch" was written by Alastair MacNeill from a story by Alistair MacLean. The plot involves the theft of a famous painting. UNACO, a United Nations detective team is put on the case. There's lots of action and locations that could have been taken from a James Bond movie, but the story is neither very interesting nor very well told. What starts as a mystery ends up as a halfhearted attempt at a spy story, and the writer adds lots of unnecessary details and a subplot about one of the characters' marriage, which slows down the pace. The book also lacks MacLean's trademark humor. Not recommended.

I just finished this book and it was great! I often read Clancy and I really enjoyed the same type of feel in this book. The main difference is that it took about 3 days to finish as opposed to 3 weeks with Clancy. I would love to follow the cast of characters on another round, they were very intreaguing.