UNACO

UNACO, the United Nations Anti-Crime Organization, is a fictional agency within the United Nations developed by author Alistair MacLean. In 1977, MacLean was commissioned by an American movie production company to write a series of story outlines about the UNACO to be subsequently produced as TV movies with the option to be expanded to novels separately. He invented a cast of main characters for the stories, writing notes and outlines for a number of adventures. MacLean himself did not expand the finished product, leaving that to other writers. The first and most detailed story was Air Force One Is Down, which was turned down by the network as being too labour-intensive and costly, furthermore, some of the executives had issues with terrorism being the main plot element. While some of the outlines were completed as screenplays, a greater number were expanded into novels. In 1980 and 1981, John Edwards (former editor of the BBC's That's Life programme) and Denis Frost worked together under the pen name John Denis on the first two novels. A few years later, (1989-93) Alastair MacNeill wrote a number of reboot novels from the source outlines, ignoring the first two novels and presenting new backgrounds and personalities of the main characters (including a gender transformation). In the later 1990s, author Hugh Miller completed the last two UNACO novels, still working from MacLean's original notes and outlines. • Hostage Tower (1980) - John Denis • Air Force One is Down (1981) - John Denis • Death Train (1989) - Alastair MacNeill • Night Watch (1989) - Alastair MacNeill • Red Alert (1990) - Alastair MacNeill • Time of the Assassins (1991) - Alastair MacNeill • Dead Halt (1992) - Alastair MacNeill • Code Breaker (1993) - Alastair MacNeill • Prime Target (1997) - Hugh Miller • Borrowed Time (1998) - Hugh Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNACO