This is the only Jack Higgins book that I've read. It was a sufficiently unpleasant experience that I have opted not to read another. I remember it as contrived, unnecessarily complex with too many characters, gratuitously violent, and with an ending that was unsatisfying. ( )

Somehow, attempting to even skim through most of this book has felt like my short season in hell. It did not keep my interest , and it feels almost hard boiled. Perhaps just not the author for me, because I thought I normally liked thrillers. ( )

Somehow, attempting to even skim through most of this book has felt like my short season in hell. It did not keep my interest , and it feels almost hard boiled. Perhaps just not the author for me, because I thought I normally liked thrillers. ( )

Higgins jammed about 500 pages into 330 pages. The story is huge in scope and the characters aren't always super-human in their ability to get things done. There is a distinct underlying story of humor as the master spies just seem unable to head off an utterly inexperienced American woman and a seriously crippled SAS person. The playing field extends from NYC to London to Paris and back and then to Sicily and then Northern Ireland before closing in London. ( )

A typical military/spy/English thrill a minute, action packed book. Plenty of twists and turns with the story moving right along. This certainly is not a book for deep reading or thinking and that is as it should be. Every book does not have to rise to the heady heights of "literature."

This is just a ripping yarn where a wealthy woman with pockets deep enough to fly all over the European continent, teams up with ex-military and current intelligence operatives to pursue the truth behind her step-sons death.

When the law can't get it done, she works with the English Underworld, the French Underworld and the Sicilian mafia. Of course a trail of death and destruction lie in her wake but the truth will out.

I personally needed this book as a simple break from reading literary fiction. Sometimes I just want to dive into a simple action or adventure book that doesn't last too long, that I can pick up and put down and that fills my need to read. This is one of those books. No more and no less. I had read other Higgins books and there are a few I really loved so it was an author that I knew and was familiar with.

Just like a chocolate chip cookie, you know what you get - comfort food with words. Cover to cover comfort food. ( )