'Alistair MacLeans's best!pure entertainment, wonderfully fast' Daily Telegraph 'MacLean is a master of this kind of action novel. Evening Standard 'In my opinion, his best ever. The pace is dazzling, the sea atmosphere superb' Sunday Express 'Grippingly suspenseful... ends with a supra-titanic bang' Time 'Mr MacLean's grip on his story and characters is superb! His climax is murderous on the nerves' Sunday Telegraph

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 he joined the Royal Navy. After the war he read English at Glasgow University and became a schoolmaster. The two and a half years he spent aboard a wartime cruiser were to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his remarkably successful first novel, published in 1955. He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century, the author of 29 worldwide bestsellers, many of which have been filmed. He died in 1987.