The Guns Of Navarone, Maclean - B-

                                                I was a 12-year-old when I saw this in a theater with my father. It, along with two other films I saw when I was becoming something other than a child, is forever seared in my memory, thus making it difficult to read this novel. It clearly lacks the immediacy of his debut, 'HMS Ulysses'. But it is a very well-written story, telling a good tale and defining interesting characters:  Mallory—Gregory Peck—is a peerless leader, a man among men, and Andrea—Anthony Quinn—is a skillful, avenging Greek superman. Their struggles getting onto the island of Navarone and in touch with the local resistance take up well over half the book, and my recollection is that significantly less time was spent on that in the film. From there, the book and the movie diverge even more. Maclean was not the screenwriter and, as is often the case, the storyline goes off in a different direction. Of course, they succeed in their mission. However,  I am left with the quandary of what to do about the other Maclean novels I optimistically downloaded, as this, and I suspect they, are just good, not great tales.