Alistair MacLean is a Scottish writer who specialized in writing thrillers and crime stories. He was third son of a Scottish minister and joined the Royal Navy during the world war two. He was a senior torpedo operator at the height of his career. He was in the thick of the war theater during the world war and saw action on many fronts especially the arctic north. After retiring he started penning his novels based on the war he saw and many of them became best sellers. MacLean never looked back as a writer until his death in 1987.
Athabasca published in 1980 is a action thriller which happens in the Arctic oil refinery. In many ways it is similar to night with out an End, with murder, sabotage and rescue undertaken by tough men in an unforgiving terrain and environment.
The operation manager of an oil company operating in Prudhoe Bay Alaska gets a ransom note to pay a billion dollars to avoid any damage to the installation. The criminal threatens to blast the oil pipelines in Alaska and another one in Canada, thus plunging the world in to a crisis.

So the company directors bring in Jim Brady Enterprises who are specialist in oil field operations. They also double as anti- sabotage experts. Dermot and Mackenzie, the best in the field arrive at Alaska to foil the criminal designs of the saboteur. But their investigations lead them haywire and the unthinkable happens. The operations manager is murdered and one of the petrol pumps in the Trans-Alaskan pipeline is damaged. So they call their boss, Jim Brady to help them with the investigations, but to no avail. The body count keeps on increasing and the criminals keep striking at will.
In these difficult times humor is something which keeps the whole action going. The investigators engage in friendly banter and keep swigging spirits. MacLean is said to have written this book during his whiskey dependent days and it sure shows. Dermot is severely injured and a lot of twists in the plot happen. In the end the criminals who include Bronwski and co are arrested and the king pin Reynolds who was using them as a cover is unmasked in a public meeting. All is well with the bashful Jim Brady and his motley group of investigators. Dermot finds love and escorts her home while Jim Brady again calls another round of drinks.
This is not one of McLean’s well known effort and in fact it has been pilloried by all sections of readers. The action and the suspense which sustains in his earlier book is missing. Dermot and Mackenzie are pretty laid back in their investigations and loose their grip on the proceedings. The wry humor exhibited by many MacLean leading men is also missing. MacLean is famous for compressing his action in few pages that the readers are at the edge of the suspense. He usually writes the plot in a taut and water tight manner that the reader never puts the book down. But in Athabasca the plot meanders a lot and the reason for the sabotage itself becomes clearer after 60 odd pages. If you are a first time reader, MacLean has written wonderful tales, so try it after this.

Alistair MacLean is a Scottish writer who specialized in writing thrillers and crime stories. He was third son of a Scottish minister and joined the Royal Navy during the world war two. He was a senior torpedo operator at the height of his career. He was in the thick of the war theater during the world war and saw action on many fronts especially the arctic north. After retiring he started penning his novels based on the war he saw and many of them became best sellers. Maclean never looked back as a writer until his death in 1987.
Seawitch is the story of a rich ruthless oil magnate who can pull all stops to make profit. Lord Worth is a very rich businessman whose main interests are in oil. This tycoon builds the largest oil rig off the waters of Houston and has invented some special type of equipments to enable his company to drill maximum quantity of oil at his will and fancies.
So the other oil tycoons get the jitters as the price of oil starts to slide. So what do they do? Well the easy way out, hire a killer to stop Lord Worth in his path. The competitors are an inhuman bunch as they don’t care how the mission is accomplished and are ready to pay the highest price to stop Worth.

The hired killer, John Cronkite has a major ax to grind against Lord Worth as he has been the root cause of many of his miseries. So Cronkite talks to the Russian, Cuban and another communist renegades top source for the weapons to destroy Seawitch. But Lord Worth gets the whiff of his plans as one of the conspirators is a spy. He hires detectives to defend Seawitch at any cost.
In the mean time, Lord Worth’s two daughters are kidnapped from his villa and are held prisoner on the Seawitch. To make matters worth the Russian and some Cuban submarines are making their way to destroy the oil platform. Lord Worth approaches the Ministry of Defense to scare the submarines and succeeds. But Cronkite has managed to steal some nuclear weapons and reached the Seawitch.
Does Lord Worth succumb to pressure? No way, he has got aces up his sleeve in detectives Mitchell and Roomer who are in love with his two daughters, Marina and Melinda. These are ex-policemen who are the typical cynical, rough and tough MacLean heroes. They are brutally honest and totally in love and will go to any lengths to rescue their damsels in distress. So the match is set and the fight is to begin.
Lord Worth who reaches the rig is also imprisoned and Cronkite and his men booby traps the entire oil platform. Mitchell and roomer arrive with a doctor as a scientist. They try to take over when Cronkite’s back is turned and Roomer gets hurt. He leaves to get more relief as Mitchell mans the platform. But Cronkite will not go so easily. He takes over Seawitch again and this time places the nuclear weapons. Soon high adrenaline shooting game commences where Mitchell kills four of Cronkite’s men. Lord Worth, his daughters and the good men leave stealthily and watches the oil rig explode with Cronkite and his men on board.
Seawitch was written during the fag end of MacLean’s writing career and you can feel him loosing touch. I feel you can buy it as a one time read and forget it.

Arthur Hailey is a British/ Canadian novelist who is said to have guaranteed his publishers a best seller. His novels were a product of considerable research and therefore very realistic and gripping. Critics say that his style was of a typical potboiler in which he took many crisis and connected them to encompass all the characters.
In each book Hailey took on a public institution and wove his tales around the characters who are the faces of this organization. The story of the institution is the story of these people involved, their attitudes, emotions, behavior is captured vividly that the reader finds a ultimate page turner. Wheels is the story of a motor company in Detroit. Some say it is loosely based on Ford motors, some say General Motors and some point to Chrysler. But it is really the story of the struggles of Detroit, the motor place.
The story of Wheels involves the intrigues involved in designing a motor car and it ultimate launch. Interspersed in this tale is a the theory of economics of car building, the assembly line politics, the competition involved, the back breaking work, family relations of the workers, race relations prevalent in the town etc. It is so real that the echoes of it vibrate even today.

The central character is Adam Trenton, a talented ambitious advanced vehicles planning manager of the fictitious national motors who is consumed by the passion of launching his own car, the Hawk which is targeted to the youth market. He puts his life and energy in to this vehicle and is involved passionately in the designing and marketing stage. He knows that the competitors are fast snipping st his heels and wants be the front trunner in the market. In this over whelming rush, he fails to see his wife and their sons at home. Erica, his wife long ignored is on the verge of a break down and starts having an affair. When even that doesn’t work, she becomes a shop lifter. Adam in the mean time blissfully ignorant, has taken up a mistress who ultimately falls in love with his tender hearted son. Soon Erica is arrested for shop lifting and this makes Adam to pause and look at what his passion has made him pay.
There are other characters, none minor. Some like Matt Zaleski who ends up in a wheel chair after decades of faith full service to the company. His daughter, Barbara, an ad executive has no time to spare and is consumed with her boy friend, a talented designer, Brett DeLosanto, who shows amazing leadership skills. At last when Matt Zaleski dies he shows the way for others as a man who could not have a personal life apart from the work he did. Brett and Barbara start a new life by helping others.
The book also is a mirror about the race relations prevailing in the country. To keep pace with the affirmative action outlined by the government, the companies try to hire blacks who previously were shunned. This book tells the story of such disadvantaged men who have no social support system and are sucked back in to the vicious cycle. People like Rollie Knight are not able to survive in-spite of getting a steady job. They are not psychologically supported and the societal sanctions suck him deep in to the mafiosi, and claims his life. Other successful African Americans, like Leonard Wingate, a personnel officer, try to give back to the community and are not supported. Hailey shows the world that such token help does not lead to uplifting the poor, but creates resentment and destruction.
Wheels, I feel is the most powerful of Hailey’s books. It deals with relations and relationships in a wonderful manner against the backdrop of an industry which is unforgiving of failure.

Arthur Hailey was born in Lutton, Bedford-shire, England. He served in the Royal Air force as a pilot in World War II. He migrated to Canada and has written best sellers like Airport, Wheels and Hotel. He moved to the Bahamas with his writer wife Sheila. Arthur Hailey died on November, 2004 leaving a legacy of best sellers and over 170 million books in print.
Strong Medicine, a typical Arthur Hailey potboiler, has him dissect the good and the bad of the pharmaceutical industry. Just as other Hailey books, he selects a public institution and develops the characters who make up this institution, and portrays how their attitudes and relationships form the ultimate pillar for the organization.
In Strong Medicine, Arthur Hailey examines the details of the women’s march in their work place. In the character of Celia Jordan, he presents a talented lady trying to break the glass ceiling to reach the top most post of her company. She encounters chauvinistic behavior from all around and also support from certain men who are instrumental for her rise.

The Books begins by Celia reminiscing her life on her way to her home and is seen remarking to her husband about the threat faced by her because of a certain Senator Donaghue. Then Hailey takes us back in time where Celia as an young sales representative tries to market some of her drugs to Andrew Jordan, a young physician. He being in a very disturbed state of mind is very curt with her. Celia, understands that a medicine developed by her company, in the trial stage is capable of saving his patient. She cuts through the protocol and delivers it to him. Andrew administers this medicine and is able to save his patient.
They are married following a whirl wind romance and soon Celia is pregnant and a mother of 2 all through working her way up in her company. This is the most unbelievable part in this book because she has a picture perfect family and everything works according to her plan. Her babies are perfect, husband adores and encourages her and she has risen steadily in-spite of motherhood and all the odds.
In the company Celia has a very supportive boss, Sam Hawthorne who encourages her and is grooming her for succession. Celia delivers a speech in the annual company meet, castigating the lack of training, vision and leadership, rendering the top management furious. She is inches away from being fired, that Sam steps in to save her. All this happens with a perfect home-life, brilliant Kids who do well in boarding schools and a husband who whisks her to Ecuador to rekindle their relationship.
Celia hitches her star to that of Sam Hawthorne and is rewarded when he becomes the president. She being the vice-president soon realizes her ambitions. Both Sam and herself start two projects. First one is the Montayne project by the French who are developing an anti-emetic for pregnant women. Second one is to tap in to the British capabilities in pharmacy and develop a off shore research unit. They select a brilliant scientist, martin Peat Smith who joins their company after a lot of persuasion from Celia.
Celia has serious misgiving about the Montayne project and her fears are found to be true because their medicine causes congenital defects in the babies. Sam Hawthorne, who has profound belief in the drug had given it to his pregnant daughter, ultimately resulting in a handicapped baby. Meanwhile the FDA is hot on his heels about the drug and he is being blackmailed by an shady FDA official Dr Mace. The guilt drives Sam to suicide and ultimately Celia is in-charge of running the company. Felding Roth is being investigated by Senator Donaghue and Celia ultimately has to rescue it, earning the enmity of the senator. Soon after incidents of an affair with Martin Smith, power struggles with Gordan Lord and the financial rescue of the company Celia is firmly entrenched in her position. The book ends with her flying down to combat Senator Donaghue and appear before the senate’s investigative committee. Apart from this sudden ending the whole book never fails to grip you and you come away with a belief that superwoman Celia will overcome the senator too.