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Summary
Summary
As 1997 approaches, England's prime minister learns of a secret document signed by Mao Tse-tung that could delay the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong for an additional 100 years. The British hire former terrorist Sean Dillon to keep the document from coming to light, before parties in Hong Kong retrieve it and destroy the balance of world power.
Author Notes
Jack Higgins is a writer and educator, born in Newcastle, England on July 17, 1929. The name is the pseudonym of Harry Patterson. He also wrote under the names of Martin Fallon, James Graham, and Hugh Marlowe during his early writing career. He attended Leeds Training College and eventually graduated from the University of London in 1962 with a B.S. degree in Sociology.
Higgins held a series of jobs, including a stint as a non-commissioned officer in the Royal House of Guards serving on the German border during the Cold War. He taught at Leeds College of Commerce and James Graham College. He has written more than 60 books including The Eagle Has Landed, Touch the Devil, Confessional, The Eagle Has Flown, and Eye of the Storm. Higgins is also the author of the Sean Dillon series. His novels have since sold over 250 million copies and been translated into fifty-five languages.
His title's The Death Trade and Rain on the Dead made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Having turned former IRA terrorist Sean Dillon into a hero in Thunder Point , Higgins refines his portrait of that deadly little man even further here by allowing him to acquire almost mystical kung-fu skills. This latest thriller opens with a prologue set in Chungking, 1944, during which Mao Zedong and Lord Louis Mountbatten sign the mysterious Chungking Covenant--a promise by Mao to extend the treaty giving Britain control of Hong Kong by 100 years. With Hong Kong due to be returned to China in 1997, the existence of such an agreement could destroy delicate international relationships. One copy of this vital document may still exist, supposedly hidden in a Scottish castle known as Loch Dhu (``Place of Dark Waters''). American billionaire Carl Morgan, determined to locate the document so that he and his Mafia associates might have leverage to protect their operations in Hong Kong, takes up residence in the castle with Asta, his stepdaughter. On the scene to foil their designs are Dillon, Brigadier Charles Ferguson and his Chief Inspector, Hannah Bernstein. Following a path from the castle to a villa in Sicily to a final confrontation in London, the search leaves a bloody trail. Unfortunately, revelation of the novel's most duplicitous villain will come as no surprise to most readers. Nevertheless, Higgins compensates for a less than elegant style with his signature unrelenting pace. BOMC main selection. (Mar . ) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Back in 1944, Lord Mountbatten succeeded in getting Mao Tse- tung's signature on a promise to extend the British lease on Hong Kong for another hundred years if Mao came to power in China. Now, with the months ticking down on the original lease, a race is on for the last surviving copy of the Chungking Covenant. Sound familiar? It's a virtual rehash of Higgins' last, Thunder Point (1993)--but don't tell that to stalwart, nondescript Brigadier Charles Ferguson or his dashing one-time IRA enemy and present right- hand man Sean Dillon, fresh from thwarting an assassination attempt against the American President in London. (This preliminary plot winds down so rapidly that you just know the assassins weren't really trying.) Now Ferguson and Dillon are detailed to retrieve the Chungking Covenant from among the personal effects of its late courier, Major Ian Campbell, so that the Prime Minister can burn it before it throws the Hong Kong political situation into chaos. Meantime, though, Palermo's capo di tutti capi, Don Giovanni (!), gets wind of the document and, determined to extend the season on the Mafia's Hong Kong resort interests, deputizes his polo-playing, construction mogul nephew Carl Morgan and Morgan's stepdaughter Asta to grab the Covenant before Her Majesty's authorities can destroy it. The Morgans lease Campbell's manor house from his elderly sister, Lady Katherine Rose; Ferguson, Dillon, and Inspector Hannah Bernstein lease the adjoining hunting lodge. Now begins a battle of wits and nerves, with each side cultivating the other's matey acquaintance and assiduously leaking disinformation about its plans. By the time Lady Katherine suddenly remembers what really happened to her brother's personal effects, the stage is set for one of Higgins' kitchen sink finales, with the principals scuba diving, stealing, kidnapping, parachuting, and assaulting their way into your hearts still again. Nowhere near the top of Higgins' form, but his hordes of devoted fans won't mind this dog-and-pony show one more time. (Book-of-the- Month-Club Main Selection)
Booklist Review
Special agent Sean Dillon seems genetically engineered for the 1990s. As a former IRA operative, he's terrorist chic, but since he's killed no women or children, he's also very PC. In any case, Dillon returns from Higgins' Thunder Point and Eye of the Storm (1992) to help British intelligence locate the Chungking Covenant, a 1944 document in which Winston Churchill agreed to assist Mao Tse-tung against the Japanese for Mao's promise to extend Britain's lease of Hong Kong for another 100 years, to 2097, should his revolution succeed. For some reason, the Mafia--and not the all-powerful Chinese triads?--are most interested in exposing the document and thus sustaining their lucrative Asian drug trade another century. However, Britain fears that revealing the covenant would strain already-delicate relations among the UK, China, and the U.S. This is pure espionage pulp from its far-fetched plot to its cut-out characters. But Higgins keeps the action too crisp and the settings too luxuriant for us to worry much about that. (Reviewed Feb. 15, 1994)0399139338Alan Moores