Books like Night Without End

" . . . and I heard clearly, even above the gale, the sudden sharp sound of the [airplane] crash, the grinding tearing scream of metal being twisted and tortured out of shape. And then, abruptly, silence - a silence deep and still and ominous. The sound of wind in the darkness was no sound at all." -- page 15Although once one of the bestselling and most popular authors of his time, Alistair MacLean's many suspense and adventure novels have fallen out of print, relegated to the racks at library fundraising sales or used book stores. In popular culture he's probably more remembered these days for those blockbuster movie versions in the 60's (Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, etc.) of his war stories.Night Without End was a long-winded, wordy yarn about a three-man geological research team at a remote Greenland outpost intervening when a small commercial airplane crashes near their outpost. Rescuing the ten surviving occupants, the plot gets underway when the team's two-way radio set (the only means of outside communication, since this is firmly set in its published year of 1959) is mysteriously damaged beyond use. What follows then is Christie-like mystery of figuring out the perpetrator - a MacLean story hallmark, as there was usually a murderous saboteur in the mix - while also braving harsh Arctic weather on a journey to rendezvous with a military boat. It took me over a week to finish this paperback, as the characters were blandly stereotypical, and the protagonist / narrator would prattle on for paragraphs when a few punchier sentences would be more effective.