The Last Frontier by Alistair MacLean

It must be about 30 odd years since I read this book. When I was young I had bought all the books by Alistair MacLean and I was most upset when I found that my mother had given away all after I had left home. Over the years I managed to buy one or two, until, a couple of years ago I got all as ebooks. I have been slowly making my way through them and it is like getting reacquainting with old friends.

This book also is a war time spy story where the hero is sent out to bring back an important scientist who has been forced to defect to the Communists. His wife and son had been taken and held as a lever to get him. Now the West would take them back and use them again as a lever to bring the scientist back. The story begins with Reynolds getting caught trying to enter Budapest. He is picked up from the police by the secret service officer and taken off to be interrogated.

How is he going to complete his mission if he going to be taken to the dreaded secret service HQ as no one returns from there? How will he meet up the resistance group who are supposed to help him get the scientist out of the country? The story does give a lot of details of history of the war as it pertained to Hungary during the cold war. The argument put forward by the leader of the resistance, who is himself an old soldier, for peace and not revenge is compelling. It is even true for today’s world as it was for the time that is written about. There is, of course, the usual heroism of the central characters that are larger than life in the story. There is also a careful weaving of the plot but by far the large part of the book is given to this history and the ideology of peace arising from it. The story twists and turns with the luck changing time and again, but for once I will not go into the details of the plot as the suspense begins on page 1.  It is hard to give more than a fleeting background in the fear of giving too much away.

Since it has been so long that I have read this book, I have a feeling that I will have to read it a couple more times to get to grips with the ideology discussed, for as usual with the first reading I am eager to know that the hero has been successful and so skim through some of the details. It is thus different from other books where generally the moral of the story is implied or just alluded to. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and will do so again soon, no doubt.