Floodgate (novel)

Infobox Book |
name = Floodgate
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = 1983 USA paperback cover
author = Alistair MacLean
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Thriller novel
publisher = Doubleday (Paperback by Fawcett Crest Books)
release_date = 1983
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 310 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-449-20343-1 (Fawcett Crest edition)
preceded_by = Partisans
followed_by = San Andreas

"Floodgate" is a novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean, first published in 1983. It is the only example of inter-novel continuity on MacLean's writing, as one of the characters in his previous novel "Puppet on a Chain" makes a re-appearance.

Plot introduction

A Irish terrorist organization, known as the "FFF" has detonated a bomb, which bursts dykes in the Netherlands, causing massive flooding of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. Unless their demands are met (i.e. immediate withdrawal of all British military forces from Northern Ireland), they threaten to detonate more bombs, flooding Holland beneath a wall of water from the North Sea. Detective Lieutenant Peter van Effen, a man with a sardonic sense of humor, and of many hidden talents, and his rather fuzzy-minded boss, Chief of Police de Graaf are called in. Lieutenant van Effen is also an undercover operative with connections to a Dutch criminal gang, and sets about to sabotage the FFF terrorists, one way or another.