None of the survivors, even Margaret Ross, whom Maclean dotes on and casts as the damsel in distress near the end, were ever more than two-dimensional. The big reveal of the bad guys was anticlimactic, though I admit to enjoying the fitting finish of the most evil one of them, as if creation itself conspired to snuff out such a foul pollutant. Night Without End became the Book Without End , one that would have been much improved by a trimming the fat and bringing it down to a lean pages.
One of Alistair MacLean's earliest thrillers, it's a well-paced, page-turner. Perfect setting, the frigid Greenland ice sheet, a group of scientists rush to save the passengers of a plane which has crashed on the plateau. What they find is even more surprising as some of the passengers are more than they seem.
Excellent stuff. A passenger crashes in the Arctic night and only three researchers are near enough to help. Short of food and supplies, with critically wounded people on their hands, they begin a desperate escape to help - knowing all the time that at least one of them is a cold-blooded murderer.
MacLean is excellent at writing adventure stories with interesting settings, and this one works very well. I especially liked that our hero wasn't infallible but you still had to admire him. The details of the cold, ic A passenger crashes in the Arctic night and only three researchers are near enough to help.
The details of the cold, ice, weather and survival techniques felt quite real to me and added up to an excellent read that kept me breathless till the final paragraphs. View all 3 comments. Jul 09, Dharmabum rated it it was amazing.
I found this in a second-hand bookshop by the pavement, in Delhi, when I had a weekend to spend and not much else to do. I had forgotten to pickup a book from home and therefore had to break my resolve of not buying more books for a while, at least this once. And I have not the least regretted it. This book is simply unputdownable.
The plot is gripping, right from the word go. The language and style of writing lucid and a pleasure to read. To me, there was the added delight of reading about the f I found this in a second-hand bookshop by the pavement, in Delhi, when I had a weekend to spend and not much else to do.
To me, there was the added delight of reading about the freezing, utterly inhospitable conditions in Greenland. The suffering the characters undergo is excruciating, and yet, given my liking for the cold, I was endlessly fascinated. Rarely do I find myself giving a 5-star rating for a book. My dad says he must have all the titles by this writer and I've seen some in our home as well. Somehow, I've never bothered to pick them up. I am now sure I will.
May 26, Rumaisa Shaikh rated it really liked it. I read this book when I was very young. And I think this was my first ever mature thriller. It was during the time when I was still caught up shifting from Goosebumps from R. Stine written for year olds to Fear-street series from R. Stine for year olds-this is acc to my times, right now kids are are much smarter and probably would read heavier books than I did at a younger age than mine Anyway, during this time I remember going through my school library, desperate for trying out I read this book when I was very young.
Stine for year olds-this is acc to my times, right now kids are are much smarter and probably would read heavier books than I did at a younger age than mine Anyway, during this time I remember going through my school library, desperate for trying out something "different". Funny as it sounds my "different" was still the same genre thriller but I did explore a different writer.
I still remember This book was kept on a higher shelf and it was covered with a black binding and the real cover of the book wasn't there. The front was just plain black.
I read the book description and it really excited me. I have always been keen about air planes and plane crashes. So i took it home and I remember it was a heavy read for me back then but i tried my best to understand each and every word and clung on to it with my heart beating really fast until the end.
These last two years, i don't know how i got reminded of this book and just , just how much I had enjoyed reading it. Sadly i couldn't remember its name. I didn't even remember any character names. However I could very faintly recall the storyline. So i went looking for it like crazy. Searching on google about one bit of the spoiler i had vaguely remembered. I knew it was a lost cause. There was no way I could find a book I remembered nothing of except the fact that it had made me so thrilled.
And so off i went again. I found four books and i read their descriptions i had already decided by then that if I did not recognize my book by reading the descriptions, then I would read all of them However I underestimated my memory and to my utter surprise, I straight away spotted my book from the description it was the last one that I checked and i was quite hopeless I just downloaded its pdf to read it again and this is weird because I still find it as interesting.
Have i not grown in all these years? Lmao i dont know! Nov 13, Sanka Steens rated it it was amazing. The story is about 3 scientists who are doing an investigation on the polar ice-caps. But one night, when they are about to go to bed, they hear an airplane very close to the ground, which is unusual at the polar ice-caps.
The plane then crashes and the scientist get to the rescue. They then find only 9 people on the plane. At first they suspect the stewardess but then they find out there are multiple killers. The kill The story is about 3 scientists who are doing an investigation on the polar ice-caps. The killers turn out to be Carazinne and Smallwood. After all that they get picked up by the Navy and they are all safe. I liked reading the book because it was written from the perspective of the main character which I like a lot because then I really get to understand that one character.
The difficulty was just what I expected, not too easy but also not too difficult. Apr 17, Ben Fairchild rated it did not like it. This is one of books that were thrown out of our local library and brought home by my old landlord.
I was too embarrassed to admit to it until now my conscience bids me confess to I accidently falling down the slippery slope of the nasty hooky plot that these trashy novels so mercilessly ensnare the reader with in the first few pages and continue to drag the hapless victim through hours and hours of miserable, sordid reading until the last page is finally attained like a prison release.
Alistair This is one of books that were thrown out of our local library and brought home by my old landlord. The hero often berates himself in the strongest terms allowable for not manifesting the level of analytical power necessary to have foreseen various obscure eventualities that could have foiled the plans of the miscreant who is finally psychologically tortured and left to die by the goodly hero. What a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Jun 21, Graeme Shimmin rated it liked it Shelves: thriller.
When an airliner crash lands in Greenland near a remote scientific base, the main scientist has to lead the survivors on a desperate march to safety through the bitter cold. When he discovers that two of the survivors were responsible for the crash, and have already murdered several people, he has to try and discover their identities before they can kill everyone and escape.
I somewhat enjoyed this arctic survival action novel with a strong mystery element. However, like all of Alistair Maclean's novels the characters are weak and stereotypical. Although Night Without End at least has a semblance of a variegated, ensemble cast. The novel works best while it remains a whodunit. Once the perpetrators are exposed which only seems to come after the protagonist has accused practically everyone else and the MacGuffin responsible for their desperate scheme is identified, the final chase sequence becomes rather predictable.
Apr 04, Alton Motobu rated it liked it. He was sitting rigidly in his seat, pressed in hard against the window, legs braced on the floor, holding on with both hands to the table fixed to the seat in front: tautened tendons ridged the backs of his thin white hands, and his knuckles gleamed in the torch-light. I lifted the beam higher, saw that he was wearing a close-fitting clerical collar. He seemed unhurt. Four people sat in the right-hand side of the front part of the plane, each one in a window seat; two women, two men.
One of the women was fairly elderly, but so heavily made-up and with her hair so expensively dyed and marcelled that I couldn't have guessed her age within ten years: her face, somehow, seemed vaguely familiar. She was awake, and looking slowly about her, her eyes empty of understanding. So, too, was the woman in the next seat, an even more expensive-looking creature with a mink coat flung cape-wise over her shoulders to show a simple green jersey dress that I suspected cost a small fortune: she was about twenty-five, I guessed, and with her blonde hair, grey eyes and perfect features would have been one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, if it weren't for the overfull and rather sulky mouth.
Maybe, I thought uncharitably, she remembered to do something about that mouth when she was fully awake. But right then, she wasn't fully awake: none of them was, they all behaved as if they were being dragged up from the depths of an exhausting sleep. Still more asleep than awake were the other two men in the front, one a big, burly, high-coloured man of about fifty-five, with the gleaming thick white hair and moustache of the caricature of a Dixie colonel: the other was a thin elderly man, his face heavily lined, unmistakably Jewish.
Not bad going so far, I thought with relief. Eight people, and only one cut forehead among the lot of them—the perfect argument, if ever there was one, for having all seats in a plane face towards the rear.
No question but that they all owed, if not their lives, at least their immunity to injury to the fact that their high-backed seats had almost completely cushioned and absorbed the shock of impact. The two passengers in the rear end of the cabin were the perfect argument for not having the seat face forward.
The first I came to—a brown-haired young girl of about eighteen or nineteen, wearing a belted raincoat—was lying on the floor between two seats. She was stirring, and as I put my hands under her arms to help her up, she screamed in sudden pain. I changed my grip and lifted her gently on to the seat. Just sit there and hold your left arm in your right hand. I'll strap you up later. You won't feel a thing, I promise you.
I left her, went to the very rear seat in the plane, stooped to examine the man there then straightened in almost the same instant: the weirdly unnatural angle of the head on the shoulders made any examination superfluous.
I turned and walked forward, everybody was awake now, sitting upright or struggling dazedly to their feet, their half-formed questions as dazed as the expressions on their faces. I ignored them for a moment, looked questioningly at Jackstraw as he came through the forward door, closely followed by Joss.
She wouldn't say. I supposed it no business of mine if the stewardess chose to devote her attention to a member of the crew instead of to the passengers who were her charges. But it was damned queer all the same—almost as queer as the fact that though the inevitability of the crash must have been known for at least fifteen minutes before the actual event, not one of the ten passengers in the cabin had been wearing a seat-belt—and the stewardess, wireless operator and the crew member in the rest room appeared to have been caught completely unprepared.
The circular door handle refused to budge. I called Jackstraw, but even the extra weight made not the slightest impression on it. Obviously, it was immovably jammed—there must have been a slight telescoping effect along the entire length of the fuselage as the plane had crashed into the ice-mound.
If the door I had noticed behind the control cabin was as badly warped as this one -and, being nearer the point of impact, it almost inevitably would be—then they'd all have to leave via the windscreens of the control cabin.
I thought of the wireless operator with his dreadful head wound and wondered bleakly whether even trying to move him out could be more than a futile gesture, anyway.
A figure barred my way as I turned from the door. It was the whitehaired, white-moustached Dixie colonel. His face was dark red, his eyes light blue, choleric and protuberant. It only required someone to get this man good and mad and he would be no more than a debit entry in the account book of some life assurance company. And he seemed good and mad now.
What in the devil is all this? What are we doing here? What's the noise outside? And- and who in the name of heaven are you? But, right then, there was some excuse for his attitude: I wondered how I would have felt if I had gone to sleep in a trans-Atlantic airliner and woken up to find myself landed in the freezing middle of nowhere with three fur-clad people, complete with snow-goggles and snow-masks, waddling about the aisle of the plane.
The noise outside is an ice-blizzard rattling against the fuselage. As for us, we are scientists managing an International Geophysical Year station half a mile from here. We saw and heard you just before you crashed. There's a critically injured man who has to have attention, and at once. We'll take him to safety and then come back for you. Keep the door shut. If it weren't for us you'd be dead, stiff as a board, in a couple of hours.
Maybe you will be yet. The young man who had been lying on the floor pulled himself on to a seat, and he grinned at me as I passed. These wide shoulders and large capable hands could be more than useful to us. You didn't look so good a minute ago. The little man in the loud tie and the Glenurquhart jacket gave an anguished sound, like the yelp of an injured puppy. We might strain a ligament—" "Relax, Solly. Outside that door it's degrees below the temperature of this cabin. I didn't wait until he had put them on, but went out with Joss.
The stewardess was bent low over the injured wireless operator. I pulled her gently to her feet. She offered no resistance, just looked wordlessly at me, the deep brown eyes huge in a face dead-white and strained with shock.
She was shivering violently. Her hands were like ice. She was standing alone by the door now, and I could hear the violent rat-a-tat of her elbow as it shook uncontrollably and knocked against the door. While we were waiting I went to the exit door behind the flight deck and tried to open it, swinging at it with the back of my fire axe.
But it was locked solid. We had the stretcher up and were lashing the wireless operator inside as carefully as we could in these cramped conditions, when the stewardess reappeared. She was wearing her uniform heavy coat now, and high boots. I tossed her a pair of caribou trousers. Put these on. Bit late in thinking about it, aren't you? I'm sorry. I couldn't leave him. I hadn't meant to be brutal, just clinical.
It's not much, I'm afraid. When I got to my feet, the stewardess was just pulling her coat down over the caribou pants. There's room for another. You could protect his head. Want to come? The two feeble night or emergency lights that burned inside were poor enough for illumination, worse still for morale. And if you want to live, just keep this door tight shut.
Her voice was low-pitched, resonant, with an extraordinary carrying power. Working in the cramped confines of that wrecked control cabin, in almost pitch darkness and with that ice-laden bitter gale whistling through the shattered windscreens, we had the devil's own time of it trying to get the injured wireless operator down to that waiting sledge below.
Without the help of the big young stranger I don't think we would ever have managed it, but manage it we eventually did: he and I lowered and slid the stretcher down to Jackstraw and Joss, who took and strapped it on the sledge. Then we eased the stewardess down: I thought I heard her cry out as she hung supported only by a hand round either wrist, and remembered that Jackstraw had said something about her back being injured.
But there was no time for such things now. I jumped down and a couple of seconds later the big young man joined me. I hadn't intended that he should come, but there was no harm in it: he had to go sometime, and there was no question of his having to ride on the sledge.
The wind had eased a little, perhaps, but the cold was crueller than ever. Even the dogs cowered miserably in the lee of the plane: now and again one of them stretched out a neck in protest and gave its long, mournful wolf call, a sound eerie beyond description.
But their misery was all to the good: as Jackstraw said, they were mad to run. And, with the wind and ice-drift behind them, run they did. At first I led the way with the torch, but Balto, the big lead dog, brushed me aside and raced on into the darkness: I had sense enough to let him have his head.
He followed the twisting route of the plane's snow-furrow, the bamboos, homing spool and antenna line as swiftly and unerringly as if it had been broad daylight, and the polished steel runners of the sledge fairly hissed across the snow.
The frozen ground was smooth and flat as river ice; no ambulance could have carried the wireless operator as comfortably as our sledge did that night.
It took us no more than five minutes to reach the cabin, and in three more minutes we were on our way again. They were a busy three minutes. Jackstraw lit the oil stove, oil lamp and Colman pressure lamp, while Joss and I put the injured man on a collapsible cot before the stove, worked him into my sleeping-bag, slid in half a dozen heat pads—waterproof pads containing a chemical which gave off heat when water was added—placed a rolled up blanket under his neck to keep the back of his head off the cot, and zipped the sleeping-bag shut.
I had surgical instruments enough to do what had to be done, but it had to wait: not so much because we had others still to rescue, urgent enough though that was, but the man lying at our feet, so still, so ashen-faced, was suffering so severely from shock and exposure that to touch him would have been to kill him: I was astonished that he had managed to survive even this long.
I told the stewardess to make some coffee, gave her the necessary instructions, and then we left her and the big young man together: the girl heating a pan over a pile of meta tablets, the young man staring incredulously into a mirror as he kneaded a frost-bitten cheek and chin with one hand, and with another held a cold compress to a frozen ear.
We took with us the warm clothes we had lent them, some rolls of bandages, and left. Ten minutes later we were back inside the plane. Despite its insulation, the temperature inside the main cabin had already dropped at least thirty degrees and almost everyone was shivering with the cold, one or two beating their arms to keep themselves warm.
Even the Dixie colonel was looking very subdued. The elderly lady, fur coat tightly wrapped around her, looked at her watch and smiled. You are very prompt, young man. I want you to get out at once—my two friends here will take you back.
Perhaps one of you will be kind enough to remain behind. Her voice was expensive as the rest of her and made me want to reach for a hairbrush. What on earth is the mattef with her? Goodness only knew that I didn't particularly want her, but the injured girl had struck me as being almost painfully shy, and I was sure she'd prefer to have one of her own sex around.
I'd love to help. What's the matter? Think I'm too old, hey? Back in twenty minutes. I'm a doctor. She patted my arm, then turned to the young girl.
A lovely name. Or American? You know, you speak English beautifully. Germany, hey? Bavaria, for a guess? Perhaps you know it? You're still very young, aren't you? A different world. There was no trans-Atlantic airliner in those days, I can tell you. But there was no offence in her face. The world was at your feet even in the Edwardian days, Miss LeGarde. I saw it in Life the other week, Miss LeGarde. Anyone who recognises me from that is my friend for life. Besides," she smiled, "I bear nothing but the most amicable feelings towards people who save my life.
But she hadn't uttered a murmur throughout, and smiled gratefully at me when I was finished. Marie LeGarde regarded my handiwork approvingly. Peter Mason, Peter to my friends. Come on, Helene, into your clothes as fast as you like. Jackstraw went to unharness the dogs and secure them to the tethering cable, while Joss and I helped the two women down the ice-coated steps from the trapdoor. But I had no sooner reached the foot of the steps than I had forgotten all about Marie LeGarde and Helene and was staring unbelievingly at the tableau before me.
I was just vaguely aware of Joss by my shoulder, and anger and dismay on his face slowly giving way to a kind of reluctant horror. For what we saw, though it concerned us all, concerned him most of all. The injured wireless operator still lay where we had left him. All the others were there too, grouped in a rough semi-circle round him and round a cleared space to the left of the stove. By their feet in the centre of this space, upside down and with one corner completely stove in on the wooden floor, lay the big metal RCA radio transmitter and receiver, our sole source of contact with, our only means of summoning help from the outer world.
I knew next to nothing about radios, but it was chillingly obvious to me—as it was, I could see, to the semi-circle of fascinated onlookers—that the RCA was smashed beyond recovery. Half a minute passed in complete silence, half a minute before I could trust myself to speak, even bring myself to speak.
When at last I did, my voice was unnaturally low in die unnatural hush that was broken only by the interminable clacking of the anemometer cups above. Really splendid. The perfect end to the perfect day. We're not children to be—" "Shut up! I looked at them all again. Her brown eyes were as unnaturally large, her face as white and strained as when I had first seen her. The one person here who should know just how vital radio really is. I don't believe it. That damned thing's heavy. Thanks for trying anyway.
I'll fix your hand up later. I—I'was just kneeling beside Jimmy here—" "Who? I—" "Second Officer? We've three pilots -we don't carry a radio operator. Harry Williamson is—was -the Flight Engineer. There had been changes indeed since I'd flown the Atlantic some years previously in a Stratocruiser. I gave it up, returned to my original question and nodded at the smashed RCA. The legs collapsed. Again the silence in the cabin, the hush, the tension that grew from the merely uncomfortable to the all but unbearable.
But I was beginning to see that there was nothing to be gained now by further questioning, much to be lost. The radio was wrecked. I turned away without a word, hung up my caribou furs on nails on the walls, took off goggles and gloves and turned to the man with the cut brow.
Forget the radio for the moment, Joss—let's have coffee first, lots-of it. I'll explain later- not that I know anything about it. Bring seme empty cases for seats out of the food tunnel, will you. And a bottle of brandy. We all need it. I looked across up at him, and saw that I could be wrong about the amiability: his face wasn't exactly hostile, but his eyes had the cool measuring look of one who knew from experience that he could cope with most of the situations, pleasant and unpleasant, that he was ever likely to come up against.
It's more than probable that we owe our lives to you. We acknowledge that. Also, we know you're a field scientist, and we realise that your equipment is of paramount importance to you.
Not at all a man to ignore, I thought. Behind the strong intelligent face lay a hardness, a tenacity of purpose that hadn't been acquired along with the cultured relaxed voice at the Ivy League college I was pretty certain he had attended.
We think—correction, I think—that you were unnecessarily rough on our air hostess. You can see the state the poor kid's in.
OK, so your radio's bust, so you're hoppin' mad about it—but there's no need for all this song and dance. This one will be replaced, I promise you. You'll have a new one inside a week, ten days at the most. I finished tying the head bandage and straightened up.
You may be dead inside that ten days. You may all be dead in ten days. In fact, they're not good at all. I don't give a tuppenny damn about the radio, as such. I thought Captain Johnson had overshot the landing field at Reykjavik in a snowstorm.
This is Langjokull, isn't it? I mean, we were flying more or less north-east from Gander, and these are the only two snowfields or glaciers or whatever you call them in Iceland in that direction from—" "Iceland? Everybody was looking at her, and when she didn't answer they all transferred their gazes to me, as at the touch of a switch.
I doubt whether even Marie LeGarde had ever had a better reaction from an audience. And when the power of thought and speech did return, it expressed itself, as I might have expected, in the most violent disbelief. Everybody seemed to start talking at once, but it was the stewardess who took my attention, by coming forward and catching me by the lapels. I noticed the glitter of a diamond ring on her hand, and remember having some vague idea that this was against airline regulations.
It can't be, it can't be! Greenland—it just can't be. I had just time to be conscious of two conflicting thoughts—that, wide with fear and dismay though they might be, she had the most extraordinarily beautiful brown eyes and, secondly, that the BOAC were slipping in their selection of stewardesses whose calmness in emergency was supposed to match the trimness of their appearance—then she rushed on wildly.
We were on a Gander-Reykjavik flight. Greenland— we don't go anywhere near it. And there's the automatic pilot, and radio beams and—and radio base checks every half-hour. Oh, it's impossible, it's impossible! Why do you tell us this? Something indeed seemed to be hurting her—but again it could wait. He looked up from the stove, where he was pouring coffee into mugs. His voice cut clearly through the hubbub of incredulous conversation. Four hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. Near enough miles from Reykjavik, from Cape Farewell, the southernmost point of Greenland, and just a little further distant from the North Pole.
And if anyone doesn't believe us, sir, I suggest they just take a walk—in any direction—and they'll find out who's right. In a moment, conviction was complete—and there were more problems than ever to be answered.
I held up my hand in mock protest and protection against the waves of questions that surged against me from every side. But first, coffee and brandy all round. Or had you forgotten?
Our cases, our night things in the plane—somebody has to get these. You sleep in your clothes—this isn't the Dorchester. If the blizzard dies down, we may try to get your things tomorrow morning. Want to try? I turned away to see the minister or priest hold up his hand against the offered brandy. He laughed, a nervous deprecating laugh. You know that better than I.
It'll do you good, really. I caught Marie LeGarde's eye, and smiled at the twinkle I caught there. The reverend wasn't the only one who found the coffee—and brandy— welcome.
With the exception of the stewardess, who sipped at her drink in a distraught fashion, the others had also emptied their glasses, and I decided that the broaching of another MarteU's was justified.
In the respite from the talk, I bent over the injured man on the floor. His pulse was slower, steadier and his breathing not quite so shallow: I slipped in a few more heat pads and zipped up the sleeping-bag. But nothing like over the shock from the wound and the exposure, though.
Almost, but not quite: I didn't at all like the direction my thoughts were leading me. Let me have a quick look at that back of yours. They seem to give you some pain. I'll rig a screen. Bearers of bad news were ever unpopular: I supposed her reaction was the modern equivalent of the classical despot's unsheathing his dagger.
Probably only bruises, anyhow, I told myself, and turned to look at the company. An odd-looking bunch, to say the least, but then any group of people dressed in lounge suits and dresses, trilby hats and nylon stockings would have looked odd against the strange and uncompromising background of that cabin where every suggestion of anything that even remotely suggested gracious living had been crushed and ruthlessly made subservient to the all-exclusive purpose of survival.
Here there were no armchairs—no chairs, even—no carpets, wall-paper, book-shelves, beds, curtains—or even windows for the curtains. It was a bleak utilitarian box of a room, eighteen feet by fourteen. The floor was made of unvarnished yellow pine.
The walls were made of spaced sheets of bonded ply, with kapok insulation between: the lower part of the walls was covered with green-painted asbestos, the upper part and entire roof sheeted with glittering aluminium to reflect the maximum possible heat and light. A thin, ever-present film of ice climbed at least half-way up all four walls, reaching almost to the ceiling in the four corners, the parts of the room most remote from the stove and therefore the coldest.
The two exits from the cabin were let into the fourteen-foot sides: one led to the trap, the other to the snow and ice tunnel where we kept our food, petrol, oil, batteries, radio generators, explosives for seismological and glacial investigations and a hundred and one other items. Half-way along, a secondary tunnel led off at right angles—a tunnel which steadily increased in length as we cut out the blocks of snow which were melted to give us our water supply.
At the far end of the main tunnel lay our primitive toilet system. Strengths It's nice to have a protagonist who is not a highly trained intelligence agent, but rather a skilled scientist who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. The cast of supporting characters is drawn finely enough that the reader cares about their welfare — and is surprised by some of the twists MacLean throws in.
The quieter-than-usual action without helicopters, bombs, sea chases, etc. Weaknesses Without wanting to give anything away, I can say that readers will likely have made good guesses about the villains' identities. Of MacLean's awkwardly formed and unrealistic love stories, this book contains one of the worst; fortunately, that weak link doesn't occupy much of the tale.
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