Book Review: Drink with the Devil by Jack Higgins

I read Drink with the Devil—the fifth appearance of Jack Higgins' trademark hero Sean Dillon—before the lockdown and decided to finally review it during my sixth month of working from home. Somehow, I always seem to pick up a Higgins novel to revive my blog every few months. Maybe it's because he is my favourite action-thriller writer and also one of my comfort reads.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

In Drink with the Devil (1996), Higgins offers a glimpse into Dillon's early life—first as a disillusioned IRA assassin, then as a skilled mercenary for the PLO and the Israelis, the KGB and the Red Brigades, and finally as an operative for a highly secret British intelligence unit answerable only to the prime minister.

The story begins in 1985, London.

The IRA sends Sean Dillon—posing as Martin Keogh—to team up with legendary Loyalist militant Michael Ryan and his young niece Kathleen. Together, they hijack a truck carrying £50 million worth of gold bullion. The IRA wants to prevent Ryan from using the gold to buy arms and ignite a civil war in Northern Ireland. Fortunately for Dillon, things do not go according to plan. One night, while he and Ryan are transporting the bullion across the Irish Sea aboard a hired boat, the crew attempts to seize the treasure for themselves. The resulting confrontation ends with the boat being blown up and the gold plunging to the bottom of the rough sea.

Cut to 1995, New York State.

Michael and Kathleen have vanished from the radar of both the IRA and British intelligence. The gold has never been recovered. Michael is serving a 25-year sentence in a New York State prison for a botched bank robbery and the shooting of a police officer. Kathleen, now working as a nurse at a nearby hospital, visits him every day. Living under the names Liam and Jean Kelly, they are believed to have died years earlier. 

But news of the lost bullion reaches the mafia family of Don Antonio Russo, who strikes a deal with Michael and Kathleen: a share of the gold—now worth £100 million—in exchange for their freedom. The discovery also attracts the attention of the American and British intelligence services, the president and the prime minister, and the IRA.

Enter Sean Dillon. The former IRA hitman is given a single mission: prevent the gold from jeopardising the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland. A decade after their last encounter, he comes face to face with his old friends Michael and Kathleen once again—and that is where the real twists begin.

While I haven't read many of the nearly two dozen Sean Dillon novels, I can say that Drink with the Devil is not one of his best. The story moves at a steady pace and has enough action and dialogue to keep the pages turning, but the plot felt rather flimsy. At times, it seemed as though even an amateur could have got away with stealing the gold. I also found it hard to believe that British intelligence could not trace either the missing bullion or the whereabouts of Michael and Kathleen. They could hardly have disappeared without a trace.

In Jack Higgins' defence, however, Dillon, his boss Brigadier Charles Ferguson, who heads the secret unit known as the Prime Minister's Private Army, and Special Agent Hannah Bernstein do not enter the picture until much later. Their story starts in 1995, when the tale of the Irish Rose lying beneath the Irish Sea begins.

Drink with the Devil has all the hallmarks of Higgins' simple, direct and conversational storytelling style. The characters—including the appearance of his other endearing hero, Liam Devlin—and the charming Lake District setting in northwest England, with its pubs and cafés frequented by Republicans and Loyalists alike, make the novel a fairly entertaining read. As in many of his IRA-themed novels, Higgins weaves the Northern Ireland conflict and its assorted players into the narrative. As a history buff, I found those political and historical undercurrents particularly interesting.

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses, it is always a pleasure to read Jack Higgins.

Rain on the Dead by Jack Higgins, 2014

I will give you my verdict right away. Rain on the Dead (2014) is probably the most disappointing Jack Higgins novel I have read till date.

The British writer's 76th action-thriller has a fine cast of characters, all old anti-terrorism hands — legendary ex-IRA gunman Sean Dillon (his 21st appearance), his boss General Charles Ferguson (head of a secret intelligence unit reporting to 10 Downing Street), Captain Sara Gideon (a decorated Afghan war hero), Major Giles Roper (a wheelchair-bound tech whiz), and the Salters, Billy (a gangster turned MI5 agent) and his uncle Harry (who runs a dockside pub and is handy with a gun).

While those are good reasons to read the book, a weak storyline and an even weaker plot are reasons to avoid it. Unless, like me, you're a big Higgins fan and will read anything by the man who gave us such gripping fare as The Last Place God Made (1971), A Prayer for the Dying (1973) and The Eagle Has landed (1975).

Rain on the Dead begins with a failed assassination attempt on the charismatic former US President, Jake Cazalet, at his estate on Nantucket, an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Unfortunately for the two Al Qaeda-backed Chechen gunmen, Ferguson and his team happen to visit Cazalet just at the time and foil the bid masterminded by a cold and calculated faceless entity called the Master. Not very original, as you can see, and not very scary either.

From there, the action moves to Drumgoole in Ireland, Paris and finally London, as team Ferguson thwarts repeated attempts to kill Cazalet. In frustration, the Master, who reports to some kind of a grand council, hires desperate men, including special ops gone rogue, to bump off Dillon, Gideon and the others, but all in vain.

Here are two more reasons why I did not enjoy the novel as I thought I would.

Apart from the weak plot, the logic or the lack of it, and the occasional typo (yes, those too), I found the writing style, peppered with dialogue, almost amateurish. Preposterous as it may sound, it seemed to me that the book was ghostwritten. The narrative lacked depth and the conversations between the various players were at times school-grade. This was not the Jack Higgins I grew up reading.

The third reason is Sean Dillon, whose role during The Troubles in Northern Ireland haunts him in many of his novels including this one; just as they do Higgins' other ex-IRA heroes. We get a sense that Dillon, though still respected by his peers and feared by his enemies, is growing old and past his prime. In Rain on the Dead, he plays a largely supportive role, always on hand with a Colt .25 but not doing much. The brave and likeable Captain Sara Gideon and the young and reckless Billy Salter take the honours, as they run down the shadowy Master before he can get anywhere near Jake Cazalet (who first appears in Dillon #6 The President's Daughter, 1997). 

So, would I stop reading Higgins? Never. I have many of his books to read and I'm sure I'll enjoy many of those.

Best-sellers Indians love to read 

Indians are fond of popular fiction which used to include potboilers like Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace. If you ask the average reader in India what books he or she has read or enjoys reading, you're most likely to hear a list that’s as predictable as can be.



Jeffrey Archer is a particular favourite and gets a rousing welcome every time he comes to India where his books are sold in no time.
 
On his last trip in March 2010, the British author visited a bookstore in Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, to release his latest five-book series Only Time Will Tell and was moved by the large crowd waiting for him. "I am often asked why I keep returning to India. This is the answer," he smiled. By the time Archer left, the bookstore had sold nearly 1,500 copies. His publisher, I’m sure, was ecstatic. 

The chief reason why best-selling fiction flies off the shelves in Indian bookstores is because they are easy to read and quick to finish, which makes sense, for the urban reader spends more time commuting, be it day or night, and has little time for such luxuries as sitting down in a quiet place and reading a good book. The last thing he or she needs is a “heavy book” and a headache. 

So what would a predictable list of, say, Top 12 best-selling authors and their most popular novels in India read like? Here it is...

01. Jack Higgins: The Eagle Has Landed, The Savage Day and The Last Place God Made

02. Sidney Sheldon: The Other Side of Midnight, Bloodline and Rage of Angels 

03. Robert Ludlum: The Bourne Trilogy

04. Jeffrey Archer: Kane and Abel and everything else by him

05. Alistair MacLean: The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare and Force 10 From Navarone

06. Robin Cook: Coma, Fever and Outbreak

07. Arthur Hailey: Airport, Wheels and Hotel

08. Mario Puzo: The Godfather and The Sicilian

09. Frederick Forsyth: The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War and The Fourth Protocol

10. Ken Follett: Eye of the Needle and The Key of Rebecca

11. John Grisham: The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, The Client and The Chamber

12. Dan Brown: The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons

I've read a few books by all twelve authors but my favourite thriller writer from the list is Jack Higgins.

Jeffrey Archer photo: www.thehindu.com