During my vacation, I went on an Alistair MacLean binge. The first of the three tales I polished off was Ice Station Zebra (1963).
If you read MacLean, you read for the action. Ice Station Zebra hits on that count. Yet the first-person smug narration was more emblematic in this one. I haven’t been reading as many omniscient narrator books where so much is withheld from the reader along the way. Only in the wrap-up does the narrator hold forth, in dialogue, and explain all the hints he’s been dropping all along as inner monologue. Sort of maddening, but at least the action never stops to let you get too frustrated with the smokescreens.
Many of MacLean’s novels and stories were made into movies, including Zebra, but I haven’t seen this one. I probably have read this one before, but I wasn’t totally sure. I treated Zebra (and the following ones) as brain candy, and I left them in the vacation house for some other escapist to enjoy.