Having seen them sat on the shelf whilst playing darts with Jake, I thought that I'd give an Alastair MacLean a go. I went through a phase of buying and reading them whilst I was at university (bizarre - no doubt that was when I was supposed to be getting inspired by the classics, and there I was reading old thrillers). Rather than the obvious Where Eagles Dare, or Ice Station Zebra, I went for The Golden Gate. Strangely the blurb at the front said that it was first published in '63, but after reading for a while, this didn't feel right, and sure enough on checking, this was a mistake and it came out in '76.
As for the book itself - not much happened to be honest. Maybe I'm being harsh by comparison with more modern stuff, but basically a bunch of bad guys hijacked the presidential motorcade in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge, but there was an undercover CIA agent on one of the accompanying coaches, and he sorted things out. That's about it!