The novels of Jack Higgins: A master storyteller

Jack Higgins (Henry Patterson) is my favourite author. To me, the bestselling British writer ranks among the finest storytellers of his era. Like his compatriot Jeffrey Archer, Higgins made storytelling look effortless, whether he was writing wartime adventures, espionage thrillers or action novels.

Although I have not read all of his 85-odd novels, I have read many of them and look forward to reading the rest. My introduction to Higgins came in the early 1980s with his masterpiece, The Eagle Has Landed. It was followed by Hell Is Too Crowded, The Last Place God Made and A Prayer for the Dying—novels I still remember vividly.

Many of Higgins' protagonists are flawed—former IRA operatives, soldiers, mercenaries or reluctant heroes—who often live by their own moral code. They may not always be your conventional heroes, but they are easy to root for. The kind you want on your side because you know they're good men, almost saint-like, and all very likeable. 

Below are only a few of my favourite Jack Higgins novels. Ask me again tomorrow, however, and I might well replace some of them with Night of the Fox, Toll for the Brave, A Fine Night for Dying or The Keys of Hell. That's the problem—and the pleasure—of choosing favourites from an author whose books I've enjoyed for more than four decades.

Have you read Jack Higgins? If so, which of his novels would make your list?

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

In Hell Is Too Crowded, American engineer Matt Brady follows a beautiful, frightened woman home to London after a night out—and wakes up to find her murdered and himself framed for the crime. Imprisoned and desperate, he must break free to clear his name. This is one of Higgins' early thrillers, first published under his real name Henry Patterson. 

Set in 1938 Brazil, The Last Place God Made is the story of down-on-his-luck British pilot Neil Mallory, who teams up with Sam Hannah, a once-legendary WWI fighter pilot now scraping a living running supplies over the Amazon. When a mission station is massacred and two nuns go missing, the two men fly into the deadly heart of the jungle to find them.

Set against the Troubles in Northern Ireland, The Savage Day introduces British agent Simon Vaughan who is sent undercover into a tense, gun-running plot involving IRA factions and a hidden fortune in stolen gold. Betrayal, sectarian violence and shifting allegiances drive this suspense thriller. 

The third in the Nick Miller series, Hell Is Always Today is a police procedural that follows Detective Sergeant Miller hunting "the Rainlover," a serial killer stalking London women on wet nights, while a separate case—an escaped boxer-turned-cat-burglar seeking revenge—runs alongside it.

In A Prayer for the Dying, IRA hitman Martin Fallon, sickened by a botched job that killed a child, flees to London hoping to escape his past—only to be blackmailed by a corrupt undertaker who witnessed his crime. Torn between a priest offering redemption and gangsters demanding one last kill, Fallon is trapped in a moral dilemma.

Touch the Devil and The White House Connection by Jack Higgins

I've slowed down on blogging so that I can read more and post less. Doesn't that sound like music to the ears? Well, this is in terms of my own posts and not my visits to other blogs. A direct beneficiary of this slack in blogging, at least in recent days, has been Jack Higgins, the British novelist whose real name is Harry Patterson. I read two of his thrillers—Touch the Devil (1982) and The White House Connection (1998)—back to back. Regular visitors to the 3Cs will know that I rate Higgins very highly and he remains one of my favourite writers.

Higgins is the author of sixty-plus thrillers including his most famous The Eagle Has Landed (1975), which is about Himmler's audacious plot to kidnap Churchill on English soil during World War II. However, instead of writing about Higgins and his fiction, which are already well known, I'll talk about three of his many unforgettable heroes in the context of the two novels I read.

The three characters are Liam Devlin, Sean Dillion, and Martin Brosnan. They appear in many novels; Dillon figures in as many as twenty. All of them have several things in common: Irish lineage, legend, idealist, wealthy, romantic, poet, scholar, philosopher, ruthless yet kind, a love for Bushmills, rebel, crack shot, and ex-IRA gunman. They once believed in the cause, a united Ireland, but became disillusioned after the Irish terrorists resorted to savagery and bombing. They are not cold-blooded killers and the one thing that is anathema to them is killing innocent people, particularly women and children.

They wear their hearts on their sleeve. They often leave behind a calling card, a rose, to convey a chilling message that seems to say, “I got this far and I could have killed you, but I didn't because I like peace more.” In Touch the Devil, for instance, Martin Brosnan, who is also a Vietnam War veteran, wants to hold someone accountable for all that he has been through. As he says, “Where does it stop? Somebody has to pay, Liam. I’m tired of being used for other people’s purposes…” He decides to go straight to the top, to the nameless British Prime Minister. Disguised as a waiter at a Christmas party in 10, Downing Street, Brosnan makes his way to her office, with a bottle of champagne and two glasses, but then walks away without firing a bullet or saying a word. He leaves a rose on the tray. The Iron Lady looks up and realises how close to death she really was. Brosnan’s is a desperate cry for redemption.

Skilled in guerilla warfare and secret operations, their services are available to anyone, at times for a price; including, in the case of Liam Devlin, Gestapo chief Himmler in The Eagle Has Landed, and to British Intelligence, often reluctantly. But, they won’t go beyond a point. They have no hopes of a normal existence. Their past is violent, their present uncertain, and their future obscure. Haunted by the IRA and hounded by British Intelligence, Higgins best describes his self-righteous and notoriously famous heroes as “dead man walking.” 

So legendary are Liam Devlin, Sean Dillon, and Martin Brosnan that they evoke awe wherever they go, in England or Ireland, among compatriots and veterans of the IRA. They are often received with exclamations of “Dear God!” or “Christ Jesus!” by old acquaintances. Higgins portrays them as hopeless romantics in their relations with lovely and sensible women whom they address softly as “Girl, dear.” It must be an Irish thing.

Most of their stories are narrated in the backdrop of the IRA and its fight against British rule in Northern Ireland. This is because Jack Higgins was born in England and raised in Belfast amid religious and political upheavals of the time. His formative years may have influenced his writing. He gives the impression of being sympathetic towards the IRA but he doesn't make them look good as much as he makes the rogue elements within the organisation look bad.

One such rogue element is the Sons of Erin, a splinter outfit of the IRA responsible for some of the worst crimes against the British, its army and its special forces. The secret organisation is made up of rich and influential members with Irish connections, including a gangster and a US senator, and is led by IRA renegade Jack Barry in The White House Connection and Frank Barry in Touch the Devil, both one and the same person. Sean Dillon in the first novel and Devlin and Brosnan in the second are “hired” by Brigadier Charles Ferguson, the powerful head of an elite and secret British security service known as Group 4, to track down Barry and eliminate him. Ferguson, whose description reminds me of actor Ernest Borgnine, reports only to the Prime Minister. He is utterly ruthless when it comes to protecting his country, even if it means using blatant lies, coercive tactics, and emotional blackmail to get the three IRA gunmen to “work” for him. For Ferguson, the end justifies the means, but he is not unkind. 

Liam Devlin is by far the most popular of Jack Higgins’ characters, appearing in about half a dozen books. I’ve never understood why Higgins didn’t give him more thrilling adventures. He is like the wise old sage, admired and respected by his protégés like Martin Brosnan and feared by his enemies. At 60, he is still fast with a gun. Post-IRA, he is a professor of English Literature at Trinity College in Dublin. 

Apart from Dillon and Brosnan there is Martin Fallon, another IRA hitman who wants out but can’t get out. They all have their own series, as do Higgins’ many other inimitable characters.

Jack Higgins often tells improbable stories where mercenaries like Sean Dillon have easy access to the American President in The White House Connection and Martin Brosnan enters 10, Downing Street without a hitch in Touch the Devil. His novels lack the brutal reality of a John le Carré, the technical brilliance of a Tom Clancy, or the researched narrative of a Frederick Forsyth. But Higgins more than makes up for the deficit by telling uncomplicated stories through some very memorable characters of espionage fiction. Characters who have "the Devil on their side," as Higgins tells you.



Previous reviews of Jack Higgins novels

October 9, 2013 - Hell Is Too Crowded, 1962

May 20, 2013 - The Iron Tiger, 1966

August 10, 2012 - A Prayer for the Dying, 1973

June 7, 2012 - A Fine Night for Dying, 1969

October 11, 2011 - The Keys of Hell, 1965

May 14, 2011 - Storm Warning, 1976

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.

BOOKS 

The Iron Tiger by Jack Higgins (1966)

British novelist Jack Higgins, whose real name is Harry Patterson and who is one of my favourite authors, wrote The Iron Tiger early in his writing career. It’s not one of his best novels I have read. Nonetheless, I found the story interesting because it is set in a remote and hostile part of the world that few authors would venture to write about—the India-Tibet border region; it is told in the backdrop of the impending Chinese invasion of Tibet; and it demonstrates the bravery of an officer of the Indian Army.

My copy of the book

Most heroes in Jack Higgins’ novels are tough, dashing and oozing charm by the gallon. Jack Drummond is no less so. The former Royal Navy pilot and intrepid adventurer flies secret missions into Tibet, supplying guns and ammunition to the rebels in their fight against the Red Army. He is about to call it a day when a beautiful woman, a nurse, implores him to undertake one last mission—flying her and an ailing boy prince under her care out of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Balpur and to safety.

But, before Drummond can fly out, the Reds invade the fictional kingdom, kill the young boy’s father, Old Khan, and vanquish his modest army, and destroy his charter plane. The Chinese want both Drummond and the Young Khan alive: Drummond, because he has been working for British Intelligence and could prove useful to Peking (now Beijing), and the Prince, because the communist government wants to quell the unrest in Balpur by installing him as a puppet king. 

This is where the story begins. Over the next 50-odd pages, Drummond and his trusted friend, Major Hamid of the Indian Army, risk everything to save the woman, the prince, and a catholic priest from the pursuing Reds. Higgins’ description of the treacherous land, right up to the nearest Indian Army border check post, is so graphic as to give the impression that it is real and he has been there. Neither is true for Higgins wrote from his own research and imagination. 

The Iron Tiger shows the Chinese in poor light, in context of Tibet and the invasion of Balpur, while India, though not part of the overall narrative, is seen as a friend with close links with the kingdom. Balpur might well be the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan which has close ties with India. It is bordered by India on the east and China to the north. Higgins doesn't say anywhere.

Although there is plenty of action, in the form of gunfire and explosions, The Iron Tiger lacks the suspense of Higgins’ other novels like The Last Place God Made (1971) or The Eagle Has Landed (1975). The narrative tends to drag a bit in the latter half as Drummond and the others, aided for a brief while by Balpur army chief Sher Dil, struggle for survival through stormy mountainous terrain, as they make their way towards the Indian border. 

As the lead character, Jack Drummond conforms to Higgins' devil-with-a-heart hero, though, he lacks the hardboiled image of some of his fellow mercenaries like Paul Chavasse, Sean Dillon, Martin Fallon or Harry Martineau. 

The Iron Tiger, written in the author's easy going style, is a decent read but not decent enough to make it to the top of the pile of books to read. 

I will leave you with what Higgins has to say about The Iron Tiger, as reproduced from his "Forward" to a recent HarperCollins edition of the book (left).

“India has always fascinated me, although I had not visited the country when I wrote The Iron Tiger. I have since, of course, and was delighted to find that, thanks to careful research, I had got it right. The period during which I wrote the book, the early sixties, was one in which the Chinese occupying power treated the Tibetan people with great brutality and many thousands of those unfortunates died. The Chinese invasion of India (in 1962) hardly made them popular in that country and, because of this, The Iron Tiger was a great success with Indian people. However, a strange thing happened. It made me, as the author, highly popular for a while as for some reason people believed that I had simply fictionalised a true story about myself and that the events of the book had actually taken place.” 

— Jack Higgins, July 1996

Previous reviews of Jack Higgins novels

1. October 11, 2011: The Keys of Hell (1965)

2. June 7, 2012: A Fine Night for Dying (1969)

3. August 10, 2012: A Prayer for the Dying (1973)

BOOK REVIEW

A Fine Night for Dying by Jack Higgins (1969)

This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Hop over and check out the eclectic mix of reviews by other bloggers. It will be worth your while.

A Fine Night for Dying, in spite of the arresting title, is not one of the best novels of British author Harry Patterson who wrote it in 1969 under his most famous pseudonym, Jack Higgins. The story is predictable, the plot is hackneyed, and the secondary characters are uninteresting. But then, it’s a Jack Higgins and if you are a fan of his, like I am, then you overlook the negative aspects and enjoy the novel, as I do.

Not every Jack Higgins novel can be like The Eagle Has Landed or The Last Place God Made or The Savage Day or Storm Warning or A Prayer for the Dying. If you’d like to dig into Higgins, these are some of the novels you ought to read. 

In A Fine Night for Dying, Jack Higgins resurrects Paul Chavasse in his sixth and final avatar as special agent for the Bureau, the little-known branch of British Intelligence that handles all the delicate assignments, read dirty work.

Chavasse, a master of languages (he even knows Urdu), must investigate the cold-blooded murder of Harvey Preston from Jamaica. The body of the former Royal Army Service Corps officer turned black marketer and smuggler is washed up ashore on the English side of the Channel, with seventy pounds of chain wrapped around him. As Chavasse discovers later, Preston was alive when his enemies drowned him. A horrible way to die.

The trail leads Chavasse to a passage-by-night racket where illegal immigrants from all over the world are promised safe passage across the Channel in the dead of night, except they all turn up dead before they can set eyes on the English coast. And eventually to the brain behind the shady business, Leonard Rossiter, a Jesuit priest who lost his faith during his incarceration and subsequent indoctrination by the Chinese during the Korean War. A man with a “tortured, aesthetic face” who couldn’t possibly be the murderer of innocents and yet that’s what he is.

However, Rossiter, himself, is a pawn in the hands of the Chinese who have few friends and allies on the continent and use his second-rate organisation to run the immigration racket and advance their political goals. 

Predictably, Chavasse, the agent with a heart (as all Jack Higgins’ agents are), goes out of his way to help the mostly poor and unsuspecting immigrants, including an Indian girl who falls for Rossiter, and on a couple of occasions lets his guard down, enough to allow his enemies to capture him. In the end Chavasse, with a lot of help from the revenge-seeking Darcy Preston, Harvey’s brother, hunts down Rossiter and kills him.

A Fine Night for Dying is a mediocre thriller because there are too many gaps in the story. For instance, Chavasse’s trail leads him directly to millionaire Enrico Montefiore, a recluse who hides on his island stronghold, at least that’s what the blurb on the back cover tells us. Inside, Montefiore has been driven to drugs by Rossiter who is after his wealth. Montefiore, himself, has very little role in the story, save for begging Rossiter for his lethal dose. If the blurb is meant to sell the book to the reader, it doesn’t.

Jack Higgins’ heroes (there are at least seven of them, Liam Devlin and Sean Dillon being the more popular ones) are a lot like Mack Bolan, the Executioner — they rarely come to harm and when they do, they manage to get out of the most difficult situations. It’s a miracle they live to tell another story. All said and done, Jack Higgins is a pure entertainer — treat him as such.

Note: I gave Jack Higgins’ The Keys of Hell, another Paul Chavasse adventure, a more or less similar verdict. You can read it here.

BOOK REVIEW

A Prayer for the Dying by Jack Higgins (1973)

A Prayer for the Dying by Jack Higgins is my contribution to this Friday’s Forgotten Books edition over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase and Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom. Don’t forget to read the fine mix of reviews of forgotten books by other bloggers over there.

What took place then was like something out of a nightmare, frozen in time, no reality to it at all. As the man in the dark overcoat glanced up, the priest produced an automatic with a long black silencer on the end. There was a dull thud as he fired. Fragments of bone and brain sprayed out from the rear of the victim’s skull as he was slammed back against the gravel.

Father da Costa gave a hoarse cry, already seconds too late, “For God’s sake no!” 

Father Michael da Costa witnesses Martin Fallon kill gangster Janos Krasko, kneeling before his mother’s grave, in cold blood. The ex-IRA bomber, disguised as a priest, looks up and aims the deadly Czech Ceska at Father da Costa but doesn’t fire. Instead, he lowers the gun, turns around and quietly walks out of the cemetery.

Fallon doesn’t kill the innocent even though he once murdered for a cause and is now on the run from his former associates in the Irish Republican Army, British Military Intelligence, and Special Branch.

With nowhere to run, Fallon reluctantly accepts the contract from Jack Meehan, whose respectable funeral business is a front for drug-pushing, prostitution, gambling and protection, to bump off his hated rival, Krasko. The contract killing is Fallon’s route to freedom, with some hard cash and a passport to Australia.

But, before he goes away, Fallon does something unusual for a hired assassin: he makes a confession in Father da Costa’s rundown church, because “the secrets of the confessional are inviolate.”

Father da Costa, who was imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese during the war, is a man of honour and swears by Fallon's confession even as an exasperated Detective-Superintendent Nick Miller, head of the CID, threatens legal action that will force the priest to speak out as a witness.

Miller has been on Jack Meehan’s tail for years but hasn’t been able to nail the gangster for lack of evidence. He is convinced of Meehan’s role in Krasko’s public murder and sees an opportunity to bring the undertaker to justice.

The very evil Meehan orders Fallon to kill the priest but the gunman refuses, saying he has taken care of the matter. The crook, who hammers nails into the palms of his own men as punishment every time they fail him, decides to get rid of both Fallon and Father da Costa.

With Fallon still around, that’s easier said than done.

Irishman Martin Fallon is one of several popular fictional characters created by Harry Patterson who widely wrote as Jack Higgins. Two others, Paul Chavasse, who works undercover for The Bureau, a secret arm of British Intelligence, and Sean Dillon, ex-IRA turned hired mercenary, figure in many of his novels. There is, of course, the charming Liam Devlin, the Irish patriot with a poetic touch, and the hero of his best-known work The Eagle Has Landed. In fact, nearly all of Higgins’ quiet, brooding and intelligent heroes are assassins with a big heart. They stick around to protect those who become unintentional victims in their sinister games, are often gifted, poetically and musically, and are hopeless romantics. 

A priest and his church and vulnerable women are a given in many of Higgins' novels. For instance, in A Prayer for the Dying, Father da Costa has a niece called Anna, a blind girl who is rather lovely. Though Higgins doesn't say so outright, she is “one of those plain faces that for some strange reason you found yourself looking at twice,” as Fallon muses. There's also another young woman called Jenny Fox who is forced into prostitution by Meehan to keep his clients happy. She must now "take care" of Fallon but the IRA gunman gently turns down her overtures as he is too old for her and because he is a "walking corpse," a common refrain among all the heroes who often address the women with a "girl dear" and a gentle caress of the cheeks. The girls, inevitably, fall for the men though that's not how it usually ends.

Higgins is also big on religion with battle-scarred priests, who, having taken lives during the war, take to healing souls in the church. It's probably an Irish thing but the Catholic priests often dish out advice to other Catholics, good men and bad men like Fallon and Meehan, in a vain bid to reform them to the ways of God. 

So, when you read a Jack Higgins novel, be prepared to be affected by the Stockholm syndrome. There is no hostage situation but you’d rather be standing beside his hero than in front of him, looking down the barrel of his Browning or Walther PPK. I strongly recommend all his novels.

Many of Jack Higgins’ novels have been made into films including A Prayer for the Dying starring Mickey Rourke as Martin Fallon, in the 1987 film directed by Mike Hodges. It also stars Bob Hoskins as Father da Costa, Sammi Davis as Anna, and Alan Bates as Jack Meehan.

My earlier reviews of novels by 
Jack Higgins:
A Fine Night for Dying &
The Keys of Hell, 
both Paul Chavasse  stories.

Book Review: Rain on the Dead by Jack Higgins

I will give you my verdict right away. Rain on the Dead (2014) is one of the most disappointing Jack Higgins novels I have read.

The British writer's 76th action thriller features a familiar cast of anti-terrorism veterans: the legendary former IRA gunman Sean Dillon (in his 21st appearance); his boss, General Charles Ferguson, who heads a secret intelligence unit reporting to 10 Downing Street; Captain Sara Gideon, a decorated Afghan war veteran; Major Giles Roper, a wheelchair-bound technology wizard; and Billy Salter, a gangster-turned-MI5 agent, along with his gun-handy uncle Harry, who runs a dockside pub.

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

While those are good reasons to read the book, a weak story and an even weaker plot are compelling reasons to give it a miss. Unless, like me, you're a die-hard Jack Higgins fan who will read anything by the man who gave us such gripping novels 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 be visiting Cazalet at the time and foil the plot masterminded by a faceless figure known only as the Master. Not very original and not very scary either.

From there, the action shifts to Drumgoole in Ireland, Paris and finally London, as Ferguson's team thwarts repeated attempts to kill Cazalet. Frustrated by these failures, the Master, who reports to some kind of grand council, hires more desperate men, including rogue special ops soldiers, to eliminate Dillon, Gideon and the others. They fail too.

Two more things kept me from enjoying the novel.

The writing, peppered with dialogue, often felt amateurish. Preposterous as it may sound, I even wondered whether the book had been ghostwritten. The narrative lacked depth, the conversations were at times school-grade, and there were even a few typos. This was not the Jack Higgins I grew up reading.

Then there is Sean Dillon himself. His role during the Troubles in Northern Ireland continues to haunt him, as it does many of Higgins' former IRA protagonists. Though still respected by his allies and feared by his enemies, Dillon is clearly past his prime. Maybe it was intentional. Here, he plays a largely supporting role, rarely doing more than turning up with his Colt .25. Instead, the brave Captain Sara Gideon and the young, reckless Billy Salter take centre stage as they hunt down the shadowy Master before he can get anywhere near Jake Cazalet, who first appeared in The President's Daughter (1997).  

So, will I stop reading Jack Higgins? Never. I still have many of his novels waiting on my shelves, and I'm certain most of them will remind me why he remains one of my favourite thriller writers.

Hell Is Too Crowded by Jack Higgins, 1962

Patti Abbot has all the links to Friday's Forgotten Books at her blog Pattinase.

“I’d have followed you to Hell if necessary,” Brady said.

“But Hell is too crowded, my friend,” Davos smiled gently. “There was never anything of a personal nature in this affair, Brady.”

Hell Is Too Crowded is a murder mystery which is interesting because Jack Higgins, the best-known pseudonym of British writer Harry Patterson, doesn’t write many of them. He usually writes spy and war thrillers in which the main characters are kind mercenaries, tough and battle-scarred, idealists with a fatalistic view of life, loners with little hope of any kind of redemption.

Matthew Brady has none of those characteristics but the structural engineer from Boston, Massachusetts, isn’t the kind of hero you'd normally find in a Jack Higgins novel. He is, in fact, a normal person who has been drinking to forget the woman who dumped him and ran off with his money. Standing alone on the embankment of the Thames in England, cut off from all human beings, Brady tries to make sense out of his life, when an attractive woman called Marie Duclos runs into him in the thick fog, apparently trying to get away from a stalker.

As gracious as all of Higgins’ heroes are, Brady is instinctively protective of her and accepts her invitation to spend the night at her place. He kisses her, has a drink, and passes out. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself in someone else’s nightmare—framed for the grisly murder of the French woman, a known prostitute.

“Her clothes had been ripped and shredded from her body. She sprawled there wantonly, her thighs spattered with blood, but it was the face which was the ultimate horror, a sticky, glutinous mess of pulped flesh.”

Inspector Mallory and Detective Gower of Scotland Yard take the half-dazed and half-drugged Matthew Brady into custody and it’s not long before he finds himself condemned to spend the rest of his innocent life in Manningham Gaol, a maximum-security prison.

Now Brady may not be anything like Sean Dillon or Paul Chavasse, the ex-IRA turned British agents and two of the author’s most famous heroes, but what he has in common with them is plenty of guts, a fighting spirit, a penchant for stupid risks, a brazen attitude, and the knowledge that he could be going down a one-way street.

Unbelievably, Brady escapes from Manningham and begins his hunt for the man (or men) who framed him. I found it slightly reminiscent of Andy Dufresne's escape from the Shawshank State Penitentiary in The Shawshank Redemption.

There hasn't been a Jack Higgins novel that doesn’t have a lovely girl in it. Anne Dunning, the daughter of Harry Dunning who worked with Brady on a dam project in Brazil, crops up out of nowhere and joins him in his quest. Their love is unspoken. Together, they unearth the truth behind the frame-up and discover why Brady was made scapegoat. The book is less than 120 pages, so I have given away very little.

Final word
Hell Is Too Crowded sounds like the title of a hardboiled noir paperback. It isn't. It’s a simple and uncomplicated story of a man who is at the wrong place at the wrong time. It has been done before. There is plenty of action thanks mainly to Brady’s knack for getting into trouble. The end is predictable though it's not always so in some other novels of Jack Higgins, who has written this one in his characteristic mild-to-moderate style. A decent read.


My previous reviews of Jack Higgins novels:

1. The Keys of Hell, 1965
2. The Iron Tiger, 1966
3. A Fine Night for Dying, 1969
4. A Prayer for the Dying, 1973
5. Storm Warning, 1976

Books I read in 2014

I’m combining my post on books and short stories I read in the fourth quarter of 2014 with the total for the year because I read very little in the last three months of the year gone by—only nine novels and novellas and a handful of short stories. I spent far too much time playing chess and scrabble, watching films, and blogging.

In all, I read 41 novels and novellas and 31 short stories in 2014, an average of 3.41 and 2.58 a month, respectively. Clearly, I need to read more.

However, I'm satisfied with what I read.

The novels, novellas, and short stories were published over 155 years and covered several genres like crime and mystery, war and western, thriller and espionage, horror and science fiction, young adult, humour, and nonfiction.

The earliest book I read (reread actually) was A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, 1859, and the most recent book I read was Gray Mountain, 2014, by John Grisham.

There were some notable takeaways from my reading in 2014.

01. Interviews with my blog friends Charles Gramlich and Elizabeth Spann Craig (look in the sidebar). My thanks to both for their very prompt and enthusiastic response to my questionnaire. I hope to do more author interviews in 2015.

02. I read more contemporary fiction last year than I ever did since I started blogging in 2009—11 novels and novellas and four short stories published this century. I should celebrate!

03. Most difficult book I read was The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, 1929. I almost gave up after the first few pages.

04. At five novels, Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson in real life) was the most read author of the year. He might be the first to breast the tape again this year.

05. Book that resonated with me the most was the media-centric The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, 2011. A journalist’s life in Rome isn't very different from that of one in Bombay or Delhi. The young author shows you how to write nonfiction and make it read like fiction.

06. The White House Connection by Jack Higgins, 1998, and Deception Point by Dan Brown, 2001, had two of the most improbable plots. Among other things, it’s very easy to pull one over the President of the United States.

07. Late 2014, I kicked off my own ‘first novels’ challenge with The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure by the pseudonymous Franklin W. Dixon, 1927, and War Against the Mafia by Don Pendleton, 1969.

08. Two titles I found discomfiting to an extent were both legal novels—Defending Jacob by William Landay, 2012, and Gray Mountain by John Grisham, 2014.

09. The grittiest crime novel and police procedural was Public Murders by Bill Granger, 1980.

10. In short stories, I enjoyed reading The Education of a Pulp Writer & Other Stories by David Cranmer, 2008-2014, and Green Acres, 2012, and Ding Dong Bell The Kitten in the Well, 2014, by Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen. Both David and Dorte are my good friends.

I have listed below all the novels and novellas and short stories I read in 2014. They are not in the order I read them. Rather, I have listed them according to their year of publication, from the earliest to the most recent.

Novels & Novellas

1859 - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (reread)
1888 - Buck Hawk, Detective by Edward L. Wheeler
1899 - The Bread Line: A Story of a Paper by Albert Bigelow Paine
1900 - Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
1907 - The Rome Express by Arthur Griffiths
1927 - The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon
1928 - The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft
1929 - The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
1933 - Carved in Sand by Erle Stanley Gardner
1951 - Bullet Proof by Frank Kane
1951 - A Noose for the Desperado by Clifton Adams
1957 - Hostage for a Hood by Lionel White
1957 - The Legion of the Damned by Sven Hassel
1960 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (reread)
1962 - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe
1963 - The Dark Side of the Island by Jack Higgins
1963 - The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy
1968 - Greylorn by Keith Laumer
1969 - War Against the Mafia by Don Pendleton
1971 - The Last Place God Made by Jack Higgins (reread)
1972 - The Savage Day by Jack Higgins
1973 - The Way to Dusty Death by Alistair MacLean
1975 - The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh
1980 - The Man in the Moon by James Reasoner
1980 - Public Murders by Bill Granger
1982 - Touch the Devil by Jack Higgins
1986 - Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith
1988 - The Hell Raisers (originally Saddle Pals) by Lee Floren
1998 - The White House Connection by Jack Higgins
1999 - The Renos by Wolf Lundgren
2001 - Deception Point by Dan Brown
2005 - Beating Around the Bush by Art Buchwald
2011 - The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
2012 - The Red Reef by James Reasoner
2012 - Defending Jacob by William Landay
2012 - A Body in the Backyard by Elizabeth Spann Craig
2012 - Rendezvous by Nelson DeMille
2013 - Splatterpunk: AN.AL—The Origins by Athul DeMarco
2014 - The Button Man by Mark Pryor
2014 - The Common Room by K.B. Rao
2014 - Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Short Stories

1856 - The Wreck of the Golden Mary by Charles Dickens
1893 - The Mystery of the Semi-Detached by Edith Nesbit
1899 - Anne by Fanny Stevenson
1902 - The Fifth String by John Philip Sousa
1902 - The Conspirators by John Philip Sousa
1902 - Experiences of a Bandmaster by John Philip Sousa
1911 - Comrades by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
1912 - Smothered in Corpses, three stories by Ernest Bramah
1913 - The Adventure of the Dying Detective by Arthur Conan Doyle
1917 - Whiffet Squirrel by Julia Greene
1922 - The Suppressed Poems of Ernest Hemingway
1933 - Hot Goods by Ray Cummings
1935 - Who Murdered the Vets? by Ernest Hemingway
1940 - Day Time Stopped Moving by Bradner Buckner
1943 - Nice Corpses like Flowers by Dorothy Les Tina
1948 - Charles by Shirley Jackson
1949 - The Witch by Shirley Jackson
1951 - The White Fruit of Banaldar by John D. MacDonald
1953 - Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
1953 - The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh
1954 - The Intruders by Evan Hunter
1954 - Sorry: Wrong Dimension by Ross Rocklynne
1954 - The Father-Thing by Philip K. Dick
1956 - Love Story by Irving E. Cox
1959 - Rain, Rain, Go Away by Isaac Asimov
1960 - Hemingway in Space by Kingsley Amis
1963 - A Woman on a Roof by Doris Lessing
2008 - The Education of a Pulp Writer by David Cranmer
2010 - Killing Trail, four stories by Charles Allen Gramlich
2012 - Green Acres by Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen
2014 - Ding Dong Bell The Kitten in the Well by Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen

The Dark Side of the Island by Jack Higgins, 1963

Yet another review of a novel by my favourite author, for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog Pattinase.

My 1987 Coronet Books edition

The Dark Side of the Island is one of the earliest and lesser-known novels of Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson). It ranks amongst the best of his early output out of a total of some eighty novels, starting with Sad Wind from the Sea in 1959 and culminating with The Eagle Has Landed in 1975, which built his formidable reputation as a thriller and espionage writer.

Since then, Higgins has produced over forty novels, and from the ones I have read, none are nearly as good as his early fiction.

At just a little over 150 pages, The Dark Side of the Island is set towards the close of World War II and many years after. It has some of the hallmarks of a Jack Higgins novel—a tough and battle hardened hero with a conscience, an idyllic setting torn apart by war, an anti-German resistance movement, a beautiful woman with trust in her heart and courage in her soul and, of course, betrayal which is what the story is about.

© www.gravetapping.blogspot.in

Captain Hugh Lomax returns to Kyros seventeen years after he came to the picturesque Greek Island to destroy a Nazi stronghold—a strategic radar station—in a secret British Intelligence operation. The reason for his sudden return eludes him but he knows something terrible happened after the successful operation and although he was caught by the Germans, he managed to escape and spend the peacetime years in England and later in California where he worked as a scriptwriter and a novelist of sorts. Now he is back to find out what happened on the island that night more than a decade ago.

The novel is built into three sections, present, past, and present—‘The Long Return,’ when Lomax comes back after the war and is shocked to find that the locals, including old friends from the Resistance, have turned so hostile as to want him dead; ‘The Nightcomer,’ a flashback, where we get a glimpse of the secret operation and what happened after; and ‘A Sound of Hunting,’ which aptly begins with the chapter ‘One Should Never Return to Anything,’ and where Lomax finally discovers the horrible truth—a friend who betrayed the locals to the Germans and condemned them to hell, and who ensured Lomax took the blame for it.

Final word
The Dark Side of the Island is a well-written mystery of sorts that begins during the war and ends years later. The trust and betrayal aspects are done well as the very people Lomax befriended and worked with during the war are now out to kill him. His bewilderment at the hateful reception he gets upon his return is convincing. Like many of Higgins’ protagonists, Lomax has two faces: he is mild, caring, and conscientious on one hand and bitter, tough, and ruthless on the other, depending on who he is dealing with. The story moves at a quick pace and there is good suspense and action towards the end. Any Jack Higgins fan will enjoy this novel.

On another note, it was interesting to see two chapters in the third part of the book, ‘A Sound of Hunting,’ were titles of books he wrote later, namely A Fine Night for Dying (1969) and Confessional (1985). 

Also, the young German commanding officer in charge of Kyros island is one Colonel Steiner who, I'd like to think, is the same Steiner who plays a more critical role in the plot to kidnap Churchill in The Eagle Has Landed (1975). Michael Caine played the role in the 1976 film version directed by John Sturges. I must hasten to add, however, that Steiner has a nominal part in The Dark Side of the Island and dies in the end, or so we are told.   


Note: Ben Boulden, who reviews a variety of books including thrillers, mysteries, and sf, wrote a fine review of this novel over at his blog Gravetapping, April 8, 2014. 

The novels of Jack Higgins

A brief post on the work of my favourite author for Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

A couple of days ago, I visited my favourite book haunt in the suburb where I live and found, not to my surprise, a whole new pile of secondhand paperbacks. I bought two novels by my favourite author Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) for Rs.25 each, less than 50 cents. I have read more than half of Higgins’ books and as some of my blog friends will concur, his earliest novels, up to The Eagle Has Landed (1975), are his best. Thereafter, the quality of his work has somewhat declined, though I still enjoy reading his mild thrillers.

I like the way Jack Higgins tells his stories — the style is clean and uncomplicated, and conversational; there is minimum description of people and places; the heroes are usually mercenaries with a heart of gold, and quite endearing; and the plots are simplistic but not unbelievable. He often makes covert operations look ridiculously easy; where the guardians of justice often get in and out of unlikely places and extreme situations without so much as a scratch. In The White House Connection, for instance, Sean Dillon, one of his most popular characters, walks into the White House as if he were entering his own home. Some of the heroes are reformed IRA hitmen and work for British Intelligence as nameless operatives.

What I like about his battle-scarred heroes is the way he romanticises them — I’d describe them as poets with a gun in their hand.

These were the two titles I added to my collection of Jack Higgins.

Sheba, 1994

The Lost Temple of Sheba is not just a biblical legend. A German archaeologist has found it. The Nazis have claimed it. And one American explorer has stumbled upon their secret — a plot that could change the course of World War II. 

The year is 1939. An American archaeologist named Gavin Kane is asked to help a woman search for her missing husband.When Kane follows the man's trail into the ruthless desert of Southern Arabia he makes two shocking discoveries. One is the legendary Temple of Sheba, an ancient world as fantastic as King Solomon's Mines. The other is a band of Nazi soldiers who plan to turn the sacred landmark into Hitler's secret stronghold…
— HarperCollins

The President’s Daughter, 1997

“Twenty years after his affair with a beautiful Frenchwoman in Vietnam, Jake Cazalet finds out he has a daughter. He must keep it a secret—but years later, when he is President of the United States, someone discovers the truth. And when his only child is kidnapped by a terrorist group, he must count on British operative Sean Dillon and FBI agent Blake Johnson to find her.”
— Amazon

Jack Higgins and Tom Sharpe

“Godber was murdered,” said Lady Mary. “I am fully aware that you refuse to believe me, but I know.”
— Opening line of Grantchester Grind, a Porterhouse chronicle, by Tom Sharpe (1995)

Last week, fellow readers and bloggers commended me for the restraint I exercised at the Books by Weight exhibition where I bought just four paperbacks—thank you! But that restraint lasted for all of one week, as I went back and picked up four more novels—two each by British thriller writer Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) and English satirical novelist Tom Sharpe. What’s with me and number four, I wonder?

My wife, ever the discerning reader, bought a lovely hardback edition of The Wind in the Willows (1908), the acclaimed children's novel by Kenneth Grahame.

This time, too, I took a few pictures one of which threw up a surprise. As I noted on my Facebook wall, I completely overlooked another fine paperback of Ray Bradbury's short story collection Long After Midnight, especially after having bought The October Country the week before. I noticed it only after I returned home and scrolled through my image gallery (see below). It was like developing the family pictures in the dark and discovering a ghostly figure staring over my grandmother’s shoulder.

Higgins is an old favourite and I have several of his secondhand war and espionage fiction. Higgins was at his best from 1959, when he published his first novel Sad Wind from the Sea, through the seventies. Although he wrote almost every year after that, sometimes two to three a year, they were nowhere as good as his early novels.

Hell Is Always Today (1968) is a departure from his traditional plots revolving around the Cold War, British Intelligence, reformed IRA assassins, World War II, and Nazi Germany. This is actually a crime fiction about an escaped prisoner who stalks women on the streets of London and kills them in cold blood. Can Detective Sergeant Nick Miller hunt him down?

We’re pretty hot on on parking tickets, but not so good on maniacs who walk the streets on wet nights murdering women.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate Jack Higgins 9 because his stories are filled with adventure, romantic ideals, and suspense, and are uncomplicated and entertaining. I’d rate him shoulder to shoulder with that other fine storyteller Jeffrey Archer.

I grew up on a regular diet of riveting stories by popular bestselling authors of the second-half of the last century. Writers I can always rely upon to tell me a good story even now. I'm fortunate that I haven't read all of their novels.

© Photographs by Prashant C. Trikannad