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Love Eagles and Breakheart! I'm intrigued by Bear Island, if only because it was shot around where I live, with the same Canadian tax loophole that funded The Changeling and early Cronenberg films.

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I'm also intrigued by Bear Island (I haven't seen it), mostly because the movies that take MacLean as a starting point tend to be better.

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fascinating piece. I was so impressed when I (somewhat belatedly) read HMS Ulysses a few years ago. In the end most of MacLean is not for me but he's of course a major talent. Your take seems dead on.

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HMS Ulysses is the go-to, pointing to the kind of writer he could have been before the movies took over. I'm pretty fond of Eight Bells, too, just because his version of James Bond is such a massive arsehole and it's set up here in bonny Scotland. He's not for me either (neither's Lee Child for that matter), but his success makes him impossible to dismiss.

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