Jack Higgins's new book is the eighth outing for ex-IRA gunman turned British Government enforcer, Sean Dillon. In his first appearance, in Eye of the Storm in 1991, he was attempting to blow up Number 10 Downing Street and its occupants, but now he has changed sides and is running with the official killers. In this latest adventure he is helping Blake Johnson, a White House security expert, to avenge the death of his ex-wife, a reporter who had become a threat to the Mafia.
Basically Boy's Own, gung-ho stuff, Higgins's books are completely story-driven, bowling along at a terrific pace and with no pretensions whatever towards being anything other than entertainments of the most superficial kind. Male bonding is the exemplar here, the rule of the gun the moral ethic and violent death the ultimate persuader. It wouldn't surprise me if Higgins is the favourite bedtime reading of such luminaries as Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.