Ice Cold in Alex

I had never heard of this book, first published more than fifty years ago, but saw it mentioned online in an interview with Patrick Hennessey the young author of current English bestseller,The Junior Officers' Reading Club (see my review of that book). Apparently the film version of Ice Cold in Alex is a UK classic. Having read the book, I hope to see the film one day. But the book itself is most satisfying. Landon's story-telling skills reminded me very much of another UK author, Nevil Shute. I have read at least a dozen Shute books and enjoyed them all. There is something about his modest, understated way of telling a good story that draws you in and keeps you turning the pages eagerly, wondering what will happen next. Ice Cold in Alex is a story like that. It is a novel of war, but without the violence. The characters are non-violent non-combatant types, simply trying to do their jobs in the best way possible, and suddenly pitted against a much larger and impersonal enemy - the empty wastes and desert of North Africa. Using an omniscient point of view, Landon allows his readers to get inside the heads of all four characters, and makes them all, in the end, extremely human and good people. It is a most satisfying read. The one jarring note here is my discovery that the book is out of print, and not just here, but in the UK. My copy is a 2004 reprint which I was able to find used. The DVD of the film, starring John Mills, however, is still available. It makes me wonder if, in this more visual age, the book will never see print again while the film lives on. If so, more is the pity, for Christopher Landon is a very skillful and masterful story-teller. I recommend this book highly. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

It would be hard to find anyone who, having seen the film version of this book, doesn't find the film moving. It is rightly proclaimed to be one of the best World War Two films made. Set against the book, the film is pretty accurate, and despite one or two deviations from the original text, is thoroughly moving. What you get with the book though is a deeper sounding of what is up with Captain Anson and the relationship he has with Sergeant Major Tom Pugh. The Hero's Journey is here laid out in greater detail than could ever be seen in the format of a film. Both Anson and Pugh, and the characters Zimmermann (van der Poel in the film) and Nursing Sister Diana Murdoch, evolve through the novel and all can claim to have made a breakthrough change by its conclusion. The book is charged throughout with `hope' and ends with the sun going down on the characters' long rite of passage and talk of a new voyage starting tomorrow.