Goodbye California (published in 1977) - By Author Alistair Maclean - the story of attempts to exploit a earthquake fault

Alistair MacLean is a Scottish writer who specialized in writing thrillers and crime stories. He was third son of a Scottish minister and joined the Royal Navy during the world war two. He was a senior torpedo operator at the height of his career. He was in the thick of the war theater during the world war and saw action on many fronts especially the arctic north. After retiring he started penning his novels based on the war he saw and many of them became best sellers. Maclean never looked back as a writer until his death in 1987.
Published in 1971, this book deals with the current flavor of terror, Islamic terrorism. MacLean describes the future terrorist and their methodologies, like nuclear destruction of the Earth. This shows that his thinking was much ahead of his time and today after 4 decades the world is fighting the same war.
MacLean has taken the theme from the Earthquake which shook California in 1906 resulting in wide spread damage to the tune of sixty million dollars and large number of deaths. The citizens of California still live under the threat of another earthquake because of the San Andreas fault line passing through the city. This ring of fire in the Pacific has been the cause of earthquakes in Japan and South America in the later decades. What if some man made activity result in the destabilization of the San Andreas fault line? This novel is taken from this premise.



Sergeant Ryder is the honest police detective who has little regard for his superiors as most of them are corrupt and not talented. He undertakes an investigation in to the corruption in the higher offices of the police department. Some Islamic terrorist steal nuclear weapons and take multiple hostages which include Ryder's wife.
So Ryder has to battle corruption, bureaucracy and pig headed superiors who try to stone wall his investigations. Ryder after a wild goose chase conclude that the Russian connection is not for real and the origin of terrorists are different. Then the game begins.
After a few twists and turns Ryder gets to turn the table on the terrorist with help of unlikely allies and manages to save the world. This book is not considered the good books of MacLean. There are so many plots and subplots which are weak and will not stand the scrutiny of the reader.
The only redeeming feature of this book is the nuggets of information that MacLean throws our way about he earth quakes and its aftermath. Maybe in the 1970's it may have seemed very far fetched, but somehow it seems all too plausible. For action buffs this too results in disappointment as there is lot of sermonizing about governments and corruption. This book is about the angst of one man in this case Ryder against the nepotism prevalent around the world. For the first time reader the advice is not to be disheartened by this book because the story teller has given us great pieces earlier.