Force 10 From Navarone (novel)

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Force 10 From Navarone

Front and back cover from Fawcett Crest paperback edition
Author Alistair MacLean
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) War novel
Publisher Collins
Publication date 1968
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 255 (1969 Fawcett paperback)
ISBN NA
Preceded by Where Eagles Dare
Followed by Puppet on a Chain

Force 10 from Navarone is a World War II novel by Scottish Alistair MacLean published in 1968. It is a sequel to MacLean's very popular 1957 The Guns of Navarone, but in terms of plot continuity chooses to follow the also popular 1961 film adaptation, such as including characters who were in the film but not in the book, although it dispenses with the film's major altered back-story.

Contents

[edit] Plot introduction

Force 10 From Navarone begins immediately after the events portrayed in The Guns of Navarone, with Captain Keith Mallory and Corporal Dusty Miller assigned on a new mission code-named "Force 10". Mallory and Miller return to Navarone to recruit their comrade Andrea Stavros (who stayed behind in the film, but not in the book). They are then joined by three young British Royal Marine Commandos, led by the brash Sergeant Reynolds, and are parachuted into Nazi-occupied frozen, war-torn Yugoslavia. There they attempt to aid the Yugoslav Partisans in their battle against the Nazi German occupiers and Chetnik collaborators. As with all Maclean novels, the true mission is secret. Everyone including the Marine Commandos are misled. The front is to rescue British POWs in occupied Yugoslavia.

As usual with MacLean, all things are not quite what they seem, but true action is focused on an attempt to demolish a strategically important bridge over the Neretva River in Bosnia and Herzegovina that is the key to a planned German offensive. Like The Guns of Navarone one of the mission(s) is to try and save significant number of Partisans from a certain death from German offensive. In the melee of Double Crosses & Triple Crosses, things do not go as planned and Some of the allied team members die protecting others.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

Force 10 From Navarone was commercially very successful, spending five months on the New York Times Bestseller List and being chosen as a Literary Guild Alternate Selection.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The novel was adapted into the 1978 film Force 10 from Navarone, directed by Guy Hamilton and starring Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, Barbara Bach, Edward Fox and Franco Nero. The book and the movie shared little other than title.

[edit] See also


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