Eye of the Storm

Rating:
Summary: The one and only Sean Dillon at his best!!!!
Review: A must-read!! This was the first Higgin's book I've ever read and it made me wanna read all of his novels. I think it's one of his best. Sean Dillon, the ruthless but charming and smart hero, is planing the coup of his life: Blowing up Downing Street 10! The book is pretty exciting and it will fascinate you from the first to the last page!!! "Eye of the storm" is a very gripping novel with a very satisfying and unusual ending!!

Rating:
Summary: The best of the Dillon books
Review: In this book, former IRA terrorist turned freelance assassin Sean Dillon attempts to assassinate former PM Maggie Thatcher, then the entire British War Cabinet, all at the behest of a former KGB colonel and an Iraqi-French oil millionaire. British intelligence operatives and two of Dillon's former IRA colleagues are tasked with stopping him.

Dillon is at his best as the charming yet cold-blooded rogue who operates according to his own set of (somewhat twisted) standards. The short appearance by veteran IRA man turned professor Liam Devlin is a welcome addition. The character of Martin Brosnan is not as clear as he could have been. I haven't read any other Higgins books involving him (though I'd very much like to,) so I'm not sure if this is a general problem with the character or just this book's incarnation of him.

All in all, a great introduction to a great character whom you wind up rooting for in spite of yourself.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best of Sean...
Review: Sean is definitely a character you will learn to love. Though ruthless, he is certainly a wonderful edition to Jack Higgins' wonderful writing. A must read!

Rating:
Summary: A master's work!
Review: This book HAS to be one of Jack Higgins' best! As the combined forces of British and French Security Services "set a thief to catch a thief", the adventure gets even more deadly and complicated. At one side there is an Irish-American Martin Brosnan who is an ex-IRA gunman trying to live a decent life and at the other hand there is a ruthless but honorable and charismatic villain, Sean Dillon, whom you can't resist loving. As the hunter becomes the hunted, the reader gets more and more sucked in this great Jack Higgins book which combines his old books (thorough the appearence of his Liam Devlin and mentioning of Frank Barry) to his new ones... And when you are finished, you can't shake the feeling that this WAS actually what REALLY happened during the mortar attack on Number Ten Downing Street on February 7, 1991...

Rating:
Summary: Sheer action all the way
Review: What separates this book from other "thrillers" is the sheer fast pace and relatively simple plot that rewards readers like a short satisfying lunch rather than a boring 3 course.

Though the characters were very much like before - 1. Brit Intel agents 2. Master-criminal/spy 3. Ambitious larger than life targets - as usual, the British PM 4. Small-time crooks who became untied loose ends that eventually tripped the villain 5. Traitor within the British establishment

There is now of course the introduction of the veteran Liam Devlin, the man who never grew old and moved as he did during the Gulf War as he did during the WW2. His successor is Martin Brosnan, with the same self-effacing humour, a former IRA who through strange circumstances found himself working for British interests.

Sean Dillon though, was unforgivably stupid to have made the errors that eventually led to his failure.

The final question is, is there a criminal in Higgins' novel who is not virtually invincible?

This book is worth the reading, for a quick theory/speculation of how the British War Cabinet survived an almost random assault - the kind which would never have been detected if not for stupid mistakes on the perpetrators.

While the characters echoed those from earlier novels, there is enough variation in the plot to make it interesting.