A Devil Is Waiting (Sean Dillon Series #19)

by Jack Higgins

Overview

The President is coming to London, but not to an entirely warm welcome. A fanatical mullah is offering a blessing to anyone who will assassinate the President, and though most London Muslims think the mullah has crossed the line, a few think otherwise.

Urgently, Sean Dillon, General Charles Ferguson, and the rest of the small band known as the “Prime Minister’s private army” are called in, augmented by an extraordinary new recruit, an intelligence captain and Afghan war hero named Sara Gideon. She has her own deep contacts, but the more she investigates, the more she discovers herself in a very dark place indeed.

For the assassination plan is only the beginning…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101554050
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/03/2012
Series:	Sean Dillon Series , #19
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	99,038
File size:	835 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Since The Eagle Has Landed—one of the biggest-selling thrillers of all time—every novel Jack Higgins has written, including his most recent works, has become an international bestseller. He has had simultaneous number one bestsellers in hardcover and paperback, and many of his books have been made into successful movies, among them The Eagle Has Landed, To Catch a King, On Dangerous Ground, Eye of the Storm, and Thunder Point.

Higgins, who lived in Belfast until he was twelve, had several close calls with bombs and gunfire at an early age. After leaving school at fifteen, he served three years with the Royal Horse Guards in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Subsequently, he was a circus roustabout, a factory worker, a truck driver, and a laborer, before entering college at age twenty-seven. He has degrees in sociology, social psychology, and economics from the University of London, and a doctorate in media from Leeds Metropolitan University.

A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and an expert scuba diver and marksman, Jack Higgins lives on Jersey in the Channel Islands.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Jack Higgins is the dean of intrigue novelists. He has no equal.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Higgins makes the pages fly.”—New York Daily News

“When it comes to thriller writers, one name stands well above the crowd—Jack Higgins.”—The Associated Press

Editorial Reviews

Capt. Sara Gideon, “a brilliant linguist” just home from a rough tour in Afghanistan, joins the can-do ranks of Great Britain’s anti-terrorism squad, the so-called “Prime Minister’s private army,” in bestseller Higgins’s rousing if predictable 19th thriller featuring former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon (after 2010’s The Judas Gate). Dillon and his team get on the trail of a Muslim terrorist, Ali Selim, who’s offering a blessing to anyone who assassinates leaders of the Western world, including the U.S. president, who’s soon due to arrive in London. Violence flares as the search extends from London to Pakistan and into the Persian Gulf, where the bad guys kidnap Gideon, heir to a banking fortune, and hold her for ransom. Higgins fans will appreciate the well-choreographed action sequences, but those seeking a nuanced view of the politics of terrorism or characters with real depth will have to look elsewhere. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Jack Higgins

“A seasoned pro...Mr. Higgins knows how to tell a story!”—The New York Times Book Review

“Jack Higgins has written some of the best suspense fiction of the past fifty years.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“When it comes to thriller writers, one name stands well above the crowd—Jack Higgins.”—Associated Press

“Higgins makes the pages fly.”—New York Daily News

“Jack Higgins is one of the best-selling authors of popular fiction in the world, often considered the architect of the modern thriller.”—The Huffington Post

“Higgins is an author with the creative power to hook the reader and keep them forever because of his terrific tales. There are many villains out there, but Higgins is by far the greatest at bringing to life the best and worst of them all.”—Suspense Magazine

From the Publisher

Even the veteran novelist doesn't seem thrilled with this one. Times of global unease provide plenty of fictional fodder for both fans and authors of international thrillers. While the latest from the bestselling Higgins (The Judas Gate, 2011, etc.) encompasses car bombing and assassination attempts, conspiracies involving members of the IRA and the Taliban and an irresistibly gorgeous heroine who happens to be both a millionaire and an accomplished killer, it suffers from a curious lack of narrative momentum, stilted dialogue and implausibility even within the fictional world it inhabits. Britain is the primary setting for the British author who has more than 60 novels under his belt, though the action propels the narrative from New York to Afghanistan, as a team of British, American, French and Muslim confederates attempt to foil a plot that may involve the assassination of the president. Or revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden. Or something. The central characters within the "Prime Minister's private army" remain Sean Dillon and Daniel Holley, under the command of General Charles Ferguson. Fans of the series will remember that both Dillon and Holley were both previously involved with the IRA, and that the latter once almost killed the former, but by now they've become close friends and comrades, their devotion to the British Empire unquestioned. Providing a romantic twist is the ravishing, redheaded Sara Gideon, a Jewish war hero and undercover intelligence officer enlisted by Ferguson's team. Everyone assumes that Holley will try to seduce her, though she spends much of the novel trying to seduce him. As has become his unfortunate tendency, Higgins attempts to advance the plot through dialogue that one can't imagine anyone actually saying--e.g., "As you two well know, several dissident groups, all IRA in one way or another, have raised their ugly heads once again." And "International terrorism is the scourge of our times, Mr. President, powered by fanatics who insist on extreme views. It's like a cancer that needs to be cut out to stop it spreading." The world survives, but will boy get girl? Or girl get boy?

Kirkus Reviews