Book Review: Santorini by Alistair MacLean

This 1987 naval novel puts ticking atom bombs on a plane crashing in the Mediterranean

Santorini by Alistair MacLean (Doubleday and Company, 1987) neatly captures an eerie if fantastic sea-based thriller involving hydrogen and atomic weapons, U.S. military—including a breach of America’s national security bureaucracy—Islamic terrorism and an airplane crash. Santorini, published before Soviet Russia’s collapse, before Islamic terrorists planted a bomb on a 747 that exploded over Scotland, is ahead of its time.

The action centers upon a British ship’s Mediterranean Sea recovery operation. This easy, engaging novel by the author of The Guns of Navarone, Fear is the Key, Ice Station Zebra, Puppet on a Chain, Breakheart Pass, Circus, San Andreas, a book about Captain Cook and Where Eagles Dare, keeps plot points moving with suspense.