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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Dallas Public Library | LARGE PRINT - HIGGINS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Higgins, J. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Twenty years after his affair with a beautiful Frenchwoman in Vietnam, Jake Cazalet finds out he has a daughter. He must keep it a secret--but years later, when he is President of the United States, someone discovers the truth. Ans when his only child is kidnapped by a terrorist group, he must count on British operative Sean Dillon and FBI agent Blake Johnson to find her.
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 (5)
School Library Journal Review
YAInternational espionage at its best. Two of Higgins's favorite heroes, Sean Dillion and Liam Devlin, unite with FBI agent Blake Johnson, a decorated Marine, to solve this suspenseful thriller. When the President finds out that he had a daughter while stationed in Vietnam, this knowledge triggers a chain of events that could place the world as we know it in danger. A devious group of people discovers his secret and, acting with terrible speed, they seize the woman. If the President does not comply with their demands, they will kill her. This mystery thriller is fast paced and filled with believable characters and humor, as well as heroes whose powers of deduction and actions continue to amaze and surprise readers right up through the climactic and emotional conclusion.Anita Short, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Pint-sized ex-IRA and ex-PLO operative Sean Dillon (Drink with the Devil, etc.), now with British Intelligence, finds himself working on behalf of the U.S. president in Higgins's disappointing latest. Dillon, Brigadier Charles Ferguson and Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein are on the track of a Jewish extremist who calls himself Judas Maccabeus and is pressing President Jake Cazalet to sign off on a thorough bombing attack on Iraq, Iran and Syria. If Cazalet doesn't authorize the strikes, Judas will kill Contesse Marie de Brissac, Cazalet's illegitimate daughter, who was conceived in 1969 in Vietnam when Cazalet, then a Special Forces lieutenant, bedded Marie's mother. There are jaunts around the Mediterranean, with lots of kidnappings (and some subsequent releases), until Dillon leads a tiny band against Judas's clifftop villa on Corfu for an obligatory and rather perfunctory final shoot-out. Higgins comes up with an appealing new good guy in the person of Blake Johnson, a White House security miracle-worker, but this novel doesn't approach his action-packed par. Dillon and company spend as much time planning against Judas (and missing an obvious clue to his identity) as they do acting on their plans. Meanwhile, the badinage between Dillon and Bernstein adds more cuteness than wit. At novel's end, Dillon gets to visit the White Housebut not to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. Maybe British Intelligence should give him a raise; certainly, Higgins should give him a better showcase next time out. BOMC main selection. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The President's illegitimate daughter is kidnapped by terrorists who haven't reckoned with the might of the Higgins regulars. Not many people know this, but back when Jake Cazalet was a lieutenant in Vietnam, he had a one-night affair with a French countess he'd just rescued that led to many warm memories and one lissome daughter, Marie de Brissac. Now an Israeli terrorist calling himself Judas Maccabeus has snatched her from a scenic Corfu villa to force her father to execute Nemesis, a series of surgical nuclear airstrikes that'll reduce Iran, Iraq, and Syria to rubble. In order to carry his demands to President Cazalet, Judas decides he needs the services of former IRA stalwart Sean Dillon. But using Dillon as a lowly errand boy (intending to execute him as soon as he's met with Cazalet) is one big mistake, since it gets Dillon's current boss, Brigadier Charles Ferguson, and his well-armed minions into the act. As Maccabeus's Stealth network of low-level moles, who've infiltrated all the official computer systems the President could use to get information, go up against the wiles of Dillon, Ferguson, and their friends-and- relations, Maccabeus heats up the brew by kidnapping Ferguson's assistant, Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein, too. But it doesn't matter, because all the characters are too blank to be worth caring about: Newcomers like Cazalet and watercolorist Marie are such ciphers that they make Dillon, who's about as personable as the Energizer Bunny, look like Hamlet. What's left is a bevy of hijackings, druggings via hypos and coffee cups, caches of Semtex and Uzis, more handcuffs than at an S/M convention, and numberless dark threats with silenced pistols (in lieu of ``Zounds! After them!'' characters mutter, ``No one will hear a thing''). Higgins's 27th (Drink with the Devil, 1996, etc.), negligible as melodrama, shows the old pro giving Tom Clancy a run for his money as the most fetishistic of contemporary thriller writers. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Booklist Review
Higgins is back--for the twenty-seventh time. His latest novel begins in 1969 in Vietnam, where an American army officer saves a French woman's life. She thinks her husband is dead, she and the American officer have a night of passion, and then her husband is found alive. Advance to 1997, when the former officer becomes president of the U.S., the French woman dies, and their daughter (the result of that night of passion) is now 28 years old. The young woman is kidnapped and will be killed if the president doesn't comply with the kidnappers' demands; he has 10 days to decide. Higgins offers the usual cast of characters--beautiful women and tough guys--and exotic locales, including London, Corfu, Sicily, Ireland, France, and the eastern Mediterranean. The President's Daughter, a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection, is another "race against the clock" thriller, and Higgins' fans won't be disappointed. --George Cohen
Library Journal Review
Sean Dillon, fresh from his adventures in Drink with the Devil (LJ 5/1/96), must now rescue the kidnapped daughter of the U.S. president. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.