Force 10 from Navarone (novel)
First edition cover (UK)
|
|
| Author | Alistair MacLean |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | War novel |
| Publisher |
Collins (UK) Doubleday (US) |
|
Publication date
|
1968 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 254 |
| Preceded by | Where Eagles Dare |
| Followed by | Puppet on a Chain |
Force 10 from Navarone is a World War II novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. First published in 1968 with a cover by Norman Weaver, it serves as a sequel to MacLean's 1957 The Guns of Navarone, but follows the events of the 1961 film adaptation of the same name. It features various characters from the film who were not in the book, although it dispenses with the film's major altered back-story.
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 joined by three young British Royal Marine Commandos, 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 their Chetnik collaborators. As with all MacLean novels, the true mission is secret. Everyone, including the Marine Commandos, is misled. The real mission (known only to Mallory, Miller, Andrea and a Partisan General) is to rescue captured British agents.
As usual with MacLean, all things are not quite what they seem, and like The Guns of Navarone one of the mission(s) is to try to save a significant number of partisans from a certain death in a German offensive. In the melee of double-crosses and triple-crosses, things do not go as planned, and distrust is rife among allies and enemies alike.
Mallory and Miller are aboard the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sirdar, on its way to the island of Kheros. Captain Jensen, the Chief of Allied Intelligence in the Mediterranean, orders them to collect Andrea Stavros from his wedding to a resistance fighter, Maria. After persuading Andrea, the three board a Wellington Bomber to take them to Termoli in Italy, where Captain Jensen awaits them. Jensen congratulates Mallory's team and introduces them to a "back-up team" of three Royal Marine sergeants – Reynolds, Groves and Saunders. They're to go to the Neretva area of Bosnia to discover why, in recent weeks, every Allied agent parachuted into that area has been captured. Jensen introduces Mallory to a Partisan General Vukalovic who commands the Partisans in the Neretva valley, who are trapped in the so-called Zenica Cage. The next day they parachute in and meet up with what they believe to be a group of Partisans led by Captain Droshny. At the camp, they are shocked to be greeted by a German Army Captain Neufeld, who explains that Droshny's men are not Partisans but Chetniks (German collaborators). Captured, Mallory says they are deserters, and when Neufeld's men discover the crashed plane, from which Mallory deliberately jettisoned the spare fuel, it seems to support his claim that they had run out of fuel.
...
Wikipedia