β Scribed by Jack Higgins
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Many of Higgins's thrillers have told one continuing saga, involving the efforts of Gen. Charles Ferguson (head of the British PM's "Private Army") and his staff to fend off various threats to queen and country. Here the timely challenge is Arab terrorism, but wobbly focus makes this a mediocre entry in a generally first-rate series. An attempt on the American president's life leads Fergusonβwho alerted the Secret Service to the threatβand his main man, legendary hit man and former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon, to Josef Belov, an associate of Vladimir Putin (who appears in a cameo) and a Russian oil billionaire who's intent on world domination and who along the way is funneling would-be jihadists from Britain into terrorist training camps in the Middle East. Instead of concentrating on the promising terrorist angle, Higgins traces Dillon and Ferguson's pursuit of Belov and his goons, a race that leads to violent shootouts in Iraq and elsewhere. Ferguson takes a bullet, and Supt. Hannah Bernstein is seriously hurt. The story climaxes in a vengeful, bloody foray by Dillon and old sidekick Billy Salter into Belov's castle stronghold in Ireland. Higgins's action has always been clipped, but here some scenes are positively rushed, and there's much that's overly familiar. Still, the author's high-speed narration and the mesmerizing hard edges of heroes and villains alike should sustain fans' perhaps grudging interest.
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Higgins has been a best-selling author for decades, but most of his books sound pretty much alike. This one, which brings back IRA enforcer turned British intelligence officer Sean Dillon, begins with a botched attempt to assassinate the U.S. president. Turns out the would-be assassin (who takes his own life rather than be apprehended) is part of a network of villains bent on causing as much terror and confusion as possible. Can Dillon and his American counterpart Blake Johnson bring the evildoers to justice? It's a standard Higgins plot, with standard Higgins characters, and fans of the novelist's previous thrillers will soon realize they are in familiar territory. The Higgins name will still attract an audience of devotees, but younger readers new to the genre are unlikely to see what all the fuss was about. Even veteran Higgins readers may find that too much of a once good thing has become tedious. David Pitt
Copyright Β© American Library Association. All rights reserved
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