In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel.

[1] According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying good Brits against bad Germans, or his penchant for high melodrama.

Critics deplored his cardboard characters and vapid females, but readers loved his combination of hot macho action, wartime commando sagas, and exotic settings that included Greek Islands and Alaskan oil fields.

"[2] Alistair Stuart Maclean was born on 21 April 1922 in Shettleston, Glasgow, the third of four sons of a Church of Scotland minister,[3] but spent much of his childhood and youth in Daviot, 10 miles (16 km) south of Inverness.

He was first assigned to PS Bournemouth Queen, a converted excursion ship fitted for antiaircraft guns, on duty off the coasts of England and Scotland.

There, he saw action in 1943 in the Atlantic theatre, on two Arctic convoys and escorting aircraft carrier groups in operations against Tirpitz, and other targets off the Norwegian coast.

[4] In 1944, Royalist and he served in the Mediterranean theatre, as part of the invasion of southern France and in helping to sink blockade runners off Crete and bombard Milos in the Aegean.

In 1945, in the Far East theatre, MacLean and Royalist saw action escorting carrier groups in operations against Japanese targets in Burma, Malaya, and Sumatra.

(MacLean's late-in-life claims that he was captured by the Japanese after blowing up bridges, and tortured by having his teeth pulled out, have been dismissed by both his son and his biographer as drunken ravings).

[11] MacLean responded three months later with HMS Ulysses, based on his own war experiences and credited insight from his brother Ian, a master mariner.

Collins were rewarded when the book sold a quarter of a million copies in hardback in the UK in the first six months of publication.

[19] MacLean followed it with South by Java Head (1958), based on his experiences in the seas off Southeast Asia in World War Two.

In the early 1960s, MacLean published two novels under the pseudonym "Ian Stuart" to prove that the popularity of his books was due to their content rather than his name on the cover.

"[22] The Ian Stuart books sold well, and MacLean made no attempt to change his writing style.

[29] Cinema producer Elliot Kastner admired MacLean, and asked him if he would be interested in writing an original screenplay.

MacLean agreed to the proposition, and Kastner sent the writer two scripts, one by William Goldman and one by Robert and Jane Howard-Carrington, to familiarize himself with the format.

Kastner said he wanted a World War Two story with a group of men on a mission to rescue someone, with a "ticking clock" and some female characters.

[30] In July 1966, Kastner and his producing partner Jerry Gershwin announced they had purchased five screenplays from MacLean: Where Eagles Dare, When Eight Bells Toll, and three other unnamed ones.

"[38] Kastner produced a film version of When Eight Bells Toll (1971), based on a script by MacLean, and Fear Is the Key (1972), adapted by another writer.

[43] She planned to produce three films based on his books, but the box-office failure of the last three MacLean adaptations put these on hold.

"[4] MacLean had spent a number of years focusing on screenplays, but disliked it and decided to return to being predominantly a novel writer.

"[50] In 1976, he was living in Los Angeles and said he wanted to write a four-volume serious piece called "The Rembrandt Quarter" based on the painting The Night Watch.

"[6] Films were still being made out of his novels, including Breakheart Pass (1975) (from Kastner), Golden Rendezvous (1977), Force 10 from Navarone (1978), and Bear Island (1979), but none did very well.

In 1976, MacLean's second wife Mary formed a company with producer Peter Snell, Aleelle Productions, which aimed to make movies based on MacLean novels, including Golden Gate, Bear Island, The Way to Dusty Death, and Captain Cook.

He then pitched six new ideas to networks, each with a 25– to 30-page synopsis to see which was commercially viable before The Hostage Tower was approved by CBS, and aired on American television in 1980.

Often, these novels were worked on by ghost writers specializing in drama, with MacLean providing only the plots and characters.

[citation needed] MacLean died of heart failure[57] at the age of 64 in Munich on 2 February 1987; his last years were affected by alcoholism.

[58] According to one obituary, "A master of nail-chewing suspense, MacLean met an appropriately mysterious death; when he died in the Bavarian capital after a brief illness, no one, including the British Embassy, knew what he was doing there.

"[2][59][58] He is buried in the Old Cemetery ("Vieux Cimetière") of Céligny, Switzerland, close to the grave of his friend Richard Burton.

[62] Screenwriter Derek Kolstad, who wrote the John Wick film series, cited MacLean and Stephen King as among his primary influences.