Alistair MacLean is one of the best selling novelists of all time. He wrote the novel Guns of Navarone (1957), which features an intrepid and handpicked team of deeply flawed yet highly skilled commandos tasked with destroying deadly and conveniently impossible to destroy Nazi super guns. The film adaptation of The Guns of Navarone was released in 1961.

He wrote the script for the film Where Eagles Dare (1968), which features a handpicked  team of moderately skilled and somewhat flawed commandos. His novelization of the screenplay was released in 1967.

In 1968 he published his sequel to The Guns of Navarone, Force Ten from Navarone,  which features a cobbled together team of deeply flawed yet highly skilled commandos tasked with destroying a bridge that is conveniently impossible to destroy. The film.Force Ten from Navarone was released in 1978.