9 replies to this topic

[Sun Tzu]

Is anybody here a Jack Higgins fan?

I read Eye Of The Storm last year when my boss gave me his copy. Now I'm hooked on the adventures of former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon. I've read The White House Connection, Thunder Point and recently Midnight Runner.

The Sean Dillon movies suck and I hope that one day they get it right, but in the meantime, is anybody else here a fan?

[Blofeld's Cat]

I read THE EAGLE HAS LANDED only because of the movie. It's the only Higgins I've read to date.

[Qwerty]

None that I can think of, what are they like?

[DLibrasnow]

I've read "ON DANGEROUS GROUND" and "THE EAGLE HAS LANDED."

I agree with your assessment of Rob Lowe as Sean Dillon...the movie version of "ON DANGEROUS GROUND" was a travesty. I cannot believe some of the liberties they took with the novel.

[spynovelfan]

I was a Jack Higgins fan when I was about 14 or 15. He's more like Alistair Maclean than Fleming. He's written some cracking thrillers - like THE EAGLE HAS LANDED - and some real duds - like TO CATCH A KING. The closest he came to Bond-like stuff was a series about a spy called Paul Chavasse, who works for a top-secret British outfit called The Bureau (pretty much the same as the organisation of the same name in the Quiller novels). Chavasse is a debonair, cruel-looking chap very much in the Bond mould. Higgins wrote them under the pseudonym Martin Fallon (Higgins is also a pseudonym, in fact). They've repackaged, added to, and republished a few in the last few years. I read THE YEAR OF THE TIGER recently. Here's a synopsis, to give you an idea of how Bond it is:

'1962. The cold war heats up as the space race begins. And one scientist, living under house arrest in Chinese-controlled Tibet, holds the key to victory.

Paul Chavasse is inserted into Tibet on a desperate mission that may be the West's only hope of beating the Soviets to the moon. He must locate -and smuggle out- Dr. Karl Hoffner. But enemies are every where -from Chinese occupiers and distrustfull natives to Soviet agents shadowing their every move. Fighting for their lives, Chavasse and Hoffner must race across one hundred rugged miles to freedom, as the future of space travel -and the world- hangs in the balance...'

If you changed a few details, and Chavasse's name to Bond throughout, you'd have a serviceable continuation, albeit more along the lines of COLONEL SUN.

Eon must hate Higgins, though - some of the titles he's used would have been perfect for Bond films. My favorite of Higgins' Bond-style titles are A FINE NIGHT FOR DYING, HELL IS TOO CROWDED, A GAME FOR HEROES and MIDNIGHT NEVER COMES.

[The Dove]

I love Jack Higgins novels. I have about eight or nine of them but my all time favorite one is Eye of the Storm. I have both the book and audio tapes which were narrated by Patrick Macnee (Godfrey Tibitt from AVTAK, but most people here know that already)

[Goldencobra]

I've only read one Jack Higgins novel "The Keys to hell" it was a paul Chavasse thriller

[Blofeld's Cat]

I was a Jack Higgins fan when I was about 14 or 15. He's more like Alistair Maclean than Fleming. He's written some cracking thrillers - like THE EAGLE HAS LANDED - and some real duds - like TO CATCH A KING. The closest he came to Bond-like stuff was a series about a spy called Paul Chavasse, who works for a top-secret British outfit called The Bureau (pretty much the same as the organisation of the same name in the Quiller novels). Chavasse is a debonair, cruel-looking chap very much in the Bond mould. Higgins wrote them under the pseudonym Martin Fallon (Higgins is also a pseudonym, in fact). They've repackaged, added to, and republished a few in the last few years. I read THE YEAR OF THE TIGER recently.

This DOES sound quite interesting, spy.

Chavasse just maybe my ticket back into Higgins.

[Trident]

I came across Higgins by "The Eagle Has Landed". I was 13 or 14 and quite liked it. I found Liam Devlin a very memorable character and was particularly fond of his ironic attitude. Beeing hooked to Higgins my next pick was "Solo" and I could not decide which of the two protagonists appealed more to me. The killer-seeking-death John Mikali or the SAS colonel Asa Morgan (whom I always saw as a kind of older Bond as he was described as beeing 49 and with slight greying temples, maybe a bow to Gardners "Licence Renewed"?). Anyway, I was really excited and read the book five or six times, both in german and in the english edition.

I think "A Prayer For The Dying" was my next one and it came close to the previous two books. But in the long term I could not get warm with the love for death his protagonists all seemed to express. I've read "Confessional" and "Touch The Devil", both with my favourite Higgins hero Liam Devlin (who remarkably became ten years younger by the way ) but I found them not in the same league as Eagle or Solo. And sometimes I was really angry with Higgins for canibalizing entire scenes from one book for another, barely changing the names. I think "A Season In Hell" or "The Eagle Has Flown" was my last Higgins. Particularly the latter has turned me off as it was far over the top and not a very good read in my opinion. Higgins Eagle would have deserved a far better continuation than that, or none at all.

But please don't let me stop you from picking up a Higgins novel. He has written some awesome thrillers and well deserves beeing discovered.

[Sun Tzu]

I've read "ON DANGEROUS GROUND" and "THE EAGLE HAS LANDED."

I agree with your assessment of Rob Lowe as Sean Dillon...the movie version of "ON DANGEROUS GROUND" was a travesty. I cannot believe some of the liberties they took with the novel.

Yes, it was on Showcase last Saturday and I watched about twenty minutes of it before going "Bleh?..."

Lowe was terrible. He was nothing like Dillon at all. I waited for some real cracking lines like "Aye, the hard woman that you are" and "Oh? Well what's a knee worth?" but they never came. In fact, I could hardly hear what he was saying.