''Athabasca'' is a novel by Scottish author

Alistair MacLean Alistair Stuart MacLean ( gd, Alasdair MacGill-Eain; 21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a 20th-century Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably '' The ...

, first published in 1980. As with the novel '' Night Without End'', it depicts adventure,

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...

and murder in the unforgiving

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, N ...

environment. It is laid in the oilfields and

oil sands Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...

fields of

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

and Canada and includes a considerable amount of technical detail on the operations.

Plot introduction

When the operations manager of an oil company operating in

Prudhoe Bay Prudhoe Bay is a census-designated place (CDP) located in North Slope Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2010 census, the population of the CDP was 2,174 people, up from just five residents in the 2000 census; however, at any give ...

in Alaska receives a mysterious anonymous threat of sabotage, his superiors call in ''Jim Brady Enterprises'', a firm of oilfield specialists. Dermott and Mackenzie, tough ex-field managers and now anti-sabotage specialists, arrive, but initial investigations get them nowhere. Then the operations manager is murdered and one of the pump stations in the

Trans-Alaska Pipeline The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one o ...

is damaged, with further loss of life. Jim Brady himself arrives to direct operations but to no avail. Then the company's operations at the Athabasca Oil Sands in Canada are disrupted and Dermott is nearly killed. Despite assistance by the

RCMP The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal and national police service of Canada. As poli ...

and the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

, suspicions fall on many employees, but nothing can be proved. As bodies and equipment damage mount up, Brady and his two investigators play a hunch and finally expose the men they believe to be responsible. But even they are not the main instigators of the events, as the final chapter of the novel reveals.

Background

Producer Peter Snell who made ''Bear Island'' was the one who suggested MacLean set a novel in the area near Lake Athabasca.

Reception

The ''Los Angeles Times'' called it "sterile, ponderous, preposterous, ungrammatical, repetitious, ridden with cliches and devoid of suspense. Banal, bromidic and bewildered." The ''New York Times'' said " aside from the old master's handling of the mise en scene he is not at his best here "arguing the lead characters "are sketchily and unappealingly drawn, and the people they deal with are cardboard cutouts" although it liked the ending "So we wind up in fine style, but only after a plodding start. " The book became a best seller.PAPERBACK BEST SELLERS; MASS MARKET: istNew York Times 25 Apr 1982: A.26.

References

External links

Book review at AlistairMacLean.com
1980 British novels Novels by Alistair MacLean Novels set in Alaska Novels set in Alberta North Slope Borough, Alaska Athabasca oil sands William Collins, Sons books {{1980s-thriller-novel-stub