This excellent thriller has never been rated quite as high as MacLean’s very best, such as Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare. Even so, 
South by Java Head is set in 1942, and tells a story taking place in connection with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. Now Singapore, the fortress that the British claimed could not be taken, lies burning and shattered, at this point defenseless before the conquering hordes of the Japanese Army. The last boat slips out of the harbor into the South China Sea. On board are a desperate group of people, each with a secret to guard, each willing to kill to keep that secret safe.
Who or what is the dissolute Englishman, Farnholme? Or the elegant Dutch planter, Van Effen? The strangely beautiful Eurasian girl, Gudrun? The slave trader, Siran? The story is full of suspense and you know that something is wrong with more than one of the passengers’ stories. Also, why are the Japanese chasing them with all they have and refusing to let them get away?
Only one thing is certain: the rotting tramp steamer is a floating death trap. Dawn sees them far out to sea but with the first murderous dive bombers already aimed at their ship. Thus begins an ordeal few are to survive, a nightmare succession of disasters wrought by the hell-bent Japanese, the unrelenting tropical sun and by the survivors themselves, whose hatred and bitterness divides them one against the other.
South by Java Head was MacLean’s third book. I liked it a lot when I first read it, and I still like it. It is not, in my opinion, as good as the previous two books, and there are several logically implausible elements to the plot, but even so it is a great and very entertaining book. I recommend it for MacLean-fans, but you haven’t read MacLean before, you should instead start with HMS Ulysses.
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