by Tim Harry

Created on: April 04, 2010

Over the last two decades I have amassed a collection of fiction books that now number over eight hundred, and so to pick a small group of favourites is a challenge. I have a small number of classics and historic novels, from the likes of Charles Dickens, but in most cases my favourite novels would probably be classed as popular fiction. The best novels, I have found, are ones that I can return to time and time again, to re-read every word, and are a form of escapism untouched by any other form of entertainment medium.

There are many novels that I could write about, but of course my reading tastes may not be for everyone, but there are two that I have described which my favourite novels are of the moment.

San Andreas – Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean was one of the great British adventure writers, perhaps not the most prolific, with only about 20 novels written in his lifetime, but a large proportion of these novels were turned into films. MacLean is perhaps most famed for the likes of the Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare, but San Andreas brings together all of the aspects that MacLean could write so well about.

San Andreas is set upon a hospital ship of the same name. A ship traversing the dangerous Arctic convoy route, as it makes it way from Russia back to the United Kingdom, a route patrolled by marauding U-Boats. Suddenly though for no apparent reason a saboteur strikes, a saboteur whom it becomes increasingly difficult to identify. Could it be one of the crew, one of the medical staff, or one of the patients?

Before any investigation though can be undertaken, the crew of the San Andreas has other problems to face, with attacks from air and sea. It soon becomes only too obvious that that the German High Command wants to capture the hospital ship, although it is for a reason that escapes all, and only the Boson, Archie McKinnon, eventually can put the clues together.

San Andreas as a novel manages to bring to life some of the horrors associated with the Arctic convoys, although of course they are horrors that only those who have experienced them can truly appreciate. It is though a setting that MacLean well understood having been there. In the novel MacLean brings together the sea and the warfare associated with it. There is the standard strong male lead character and passing reference to romance that MacLean so despised.

San Andreas is the most vivid of all of the novels written by MacLean and perhaps because it has not been made into a film,

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