Ice Station Zebra

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From the synopsis, we know that this stranger, Dr Carpenter is a very suspicious and mysterious man. A British Meteorological drift station set up in the Arctic- Ice Station Zebra, has gone completely off the grids. Classic 60s Cold War era nuclear submarine adventure, filmed by MGM in 1968 starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan. One could imagine a young Tom Clancy reading this book and musing about writing his own Cold War submarine tale. Finally, MacLean even mentions the newly-operational Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin by involving the ship in an aborted attempt to reach the survivors at Drift Ice Station Zebra.

Now imagine having a narrator, an excellent one, no doubt, narrating away while at the same time hiding so much from everyone else, including his readers. There are beautiful abstract patterns made by the sub as it cuts its way through the North Sea, all the gleaming, meticulous, finely wrought, intricate machinery inside the sub, and huge chunks of mountainous ice hanging down from the roof of the ice cap like molars. I like the interplay between the characters in this one and the descriptions of the ice pack actually made me feel COLD they were so good.I like the military style-font here, the hunched figures in the centre dwarfed by the submarine, which is itself lost in the ice and facing an oncoming blizzard. When you are out at sea and your life depends on the guys around you, you quickly develop a family type relationship. Much of the novel's characterisation involving the submarine's crew was jettisoned in favour of these new cinematic creations. That the head of the Drift Ice Station Zebra, Major Halliwell, is Dr Carpenter's brother, is also revealed early on.

But the way that sailors relate was real--I grew up Navy and watched even non-nukes react to each other this way. In fact, the killer is revealed during the course of the book, as the author does drop a clue that would reveal the guilty party.In June 1967, Laurence Harvey and Patrick McGoohan joined the cast as the Russian agent and British agent, respectively. Ice Station Zebra is a 1968 American espionage thriller film directed by John Sturges and starring Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine, and Jim Brown.