Dark Justice (Sean Dillon Series #12) » (Reprint)

Since The Eagle Has Landed—one of the biggest-selling thrillers of all time—every novel Jack Higgins has written has become an international bestseller. He has had simultaneous number-one bestsellers in hardcover and paperback, and many of his books have been made into successful movies, including The Eagle Has Landed, To Catch a King, On Dangerous Ground, Eye of the Storm, and Thunder Point. He has degrees in sociology, social psychology, and economics from the University of London, and a doctorate in media from Leeds Metropolitan University. A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and an expert scuba diver and marksman, Higgins lives in Jersey on the Channel Islands.

Jack Higgins pits the heroic covert intelligence team of Blake Johnson and Sean Dillon against a hidden foe in a very different kind of game— with a very different set of rules.

Publishers Weekly

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 Ferguson-who alerted the Secret Service to the threat-and 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. Agent, Ed Victor. (Aug. 23) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.\