When Truth magazine reporter Katherine Johnson starts looking too closely at the life of millionaire socialite and mob boss Jack Fox, however, the veneer of gentility dissolves immediately. Her body is found one morning floating in the East River, and the coroner suspects foul play. Wrenched by the pain of his loss, her ex-husband--former FBI agent Blake Johnson--decides to take the law into his own hands.

In fact, as part of the secret White House department known as The Basement, Blake actually has the president's permission to take out Fox in the best way he sees fit. As Blake begins his Fox hunt, 'Day of Reckoning ' evolves into an international duel between the masterminds of justice and criminality. Blake struggles to exact his revenge by slowly undermining his opponents' businesses.

And Fox matches him at every turn. While the contest between the power brokers is compelling on the surface, Higgins is unable to infuse his characters with enough life to make the story as engaging as it might have been. The heroes and villains borrow heavily from the classic James Bond play book, complete with brandy snifters, brandname cigarettes, Saville Row suits, and secret, world-dominating empires. It's fun to read as a sort of homage to thrillers of the early Cold War period, but Day of Reckoning never matches the success of such earlier Higgins greats as The Eagle Has Landed and seems to fall all too frequently into cliché. --Patrick O'Kelley--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly There's a jaunty, even slapdash feel to the storytelling in Higgins's exciting new novel featuring his longtime antihero, Sean Dillon. And that's fine. The clipped dialogue and minimal exposition suit their subject well, for Dillon--once the IRA's most feared enforcer, now working for British secret police--and his cohorts are men (and, occasionally, women) of few words and swift action. Higgins's new plot is as direct as his characters

. The journalist wife of Dillon's old comrade Blake Johnson is killed in Brooklyn on orders of her latest object of investigation, Jack Fox, heir apparent to the powerful Solazzo crime family. The law can't touch Fox, but Blake and Dillon can and will. Aided by Dillon's black-ops boss, Brigadier Charles Ferguson, and his crew, plus a father/son team of British gangsters, Blake and Dillon strike again and again at Fox's wallet: shutting down his London gambling den; sinking a boat laden with his gold; destroying a cache of his weapons in Ireland; foiling his plans for a major robbery in London. A subplot in which Fox's uncle, the Solazzo don, spies on his nephew with increasing displeasure adds dimension to the linear narrative and leads to a clever denouement.

A classic Jack Higgins thriller and a timely one at that. About Sean Dillon, a master terrorist who has slipped through the hands of authorities on every continent, reminiscent of Carlos the Jackal. During the Gulf War, when Hussein is feeling the grip of the British and American forces closing in on him, that Dillon once again emerges -- right into the eye of Saddam's storm.. 320 pp. Condition: Excellent except for some slight water staining on several of the page tops at the beginning of the book.

 Putnam Pub Group 0399137580 / 9780399137587
E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A. out of Print 

Price: 10.00 USD

It's a longstanding grudge, complicated by the recent kidnapping of Hussein's promised bride, his 13-year-old cousin Sara, who was earlier kidnapped by Hussein himself. The proceedings are complicated; it helps if the reader is a veteran of this long-running series. But it's all pure Higgins: almost every shot hits square between the eyes, and all the characters are hard lads indeed.

Product Description: The master of suspense returns, with a chilling novel of modern terrorism and revenge. For intelligence operative Sean Dillon, it begins with a routine passport check. But the events it will lead to will be as bloody as any he has ever known. The man he stops at Heathrow Airport is Caspar Rashid, born and bred in England but with family ties to a Bedouin tribe fiercely wedded to the old ways, as Rashid has just found out to his pain. His thirteen-year-old daughter, Sara, has been kidnapped by Rashid's own father and taken to Iraq to be married to a man known as the Hammer of God, one of the Middle East's most feared terrorists. Dillon has had his own run-ins with that clan, and when the distraught man begs Dillon for help, he sees a chance to settle some old scores-but he has no idea of the terrible chain of events he is about to unleash, nor of the implacable enemies he is about to gain. Before his journey is done, many men will die-and Dillon may be one of them. Filled with dark suspense, driven by characters of complexity and passion, this novel once again proves that in the words of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Jack Higgins is the dean of intrigue novelists. He has no equal." Published at Twenty Eight Dollars.

 Putnam Adult 0-399-15380-2 / 9780399153808
Hardcover Brand New Condition New York 

Price: 21.29 USD