Without Mercy 英文原版

Higgins picks up where his last novel (Dark Justice)
featuring top-level British intelligence officer Gen. Charles
Ferguson and his right-hand agent, former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon,
left off, three weeks after a shootout killed Russian billionaire
Josef Belov and his agents Yuri Ashimov and Maj. Greta Novikova.
But hold on, not all of the above are really dead, and those left
alive have sworn to destroy the general and his band of spies, who
are also grieving for their colleague Supt. Hannah Bernstein,
another casualty of the confrontation. President Vladimir Putin
makes several appearances to give orders to various minions and
Russian super-agent, Igor Levin. Their mission is to secure the
now-deceased Belov’s vast oil interests for the Russian government.
With few double-crosses, deceptions or surprises of any sort,
Higgins’s plotting is not very inventive, and the final shootout,
when it limps onstage, takes two short pages. The whole
mise-en-scène feels dated, with little in the way of modern-day
tradecraft or technology. Ferguson’s admiration for his Russian
enemies and bonhomie for Levin in particular seems plain silly:
“Damn his eyes, I like the bastard. Who knows what the future
holds?” Not much for Higgins’s fans, if we’re to judge from his
latest example. (Aug.)Correction:In the June 27 review of
Paul Anderson’s Hunger’s Brides, the agent information was
misstated. The book was acquired from Random House
Canada.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Picking up where Higgins’ Dark Justice (2004) left off,
Sean Dillon–former IRA enforcer now working for British
intelligence–seeks revenge on the Russian agents responsible for
murdering his colleague Hanna Bernstein. The Russians themselves,
however, are not too happy with Dillon for killing their man,
billionaire and former KGB official Josef Belov, who was been
responsible for “terrorism of all kinds.” With the death of
dealmaker Belov, Russia’s prospects for a steady flow of oil out of
Iraq (“since the vote for democracy”) are threatened; the Kremlin
must now resort to Plan B: using impersonator Max Zubin to stand in
for Belov to maintain some stability in the Russia-Iraq connection
until a new, improved Plan A emerges. This is pretty standard Jack
Higgins: wooden characters and far-flung if barely credible
locales, but enough plot and action to keep his many fans by his
side. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights
reserved

On the pavement, Hannah Bernstein was trying to haul herself up,
clutching at the railings as Dillon got to her. “You’re all right,
just hold on to me.” But there was blood coming down her face, and
he was afraid. In Jack Higgins’s acclaimed bestseller Dark Justice,
intelligence operative Sean Dillon and his colleagues in Britain
and the United States beat back a terrible enemy, but at an equally
terrible cost. One of them was shot, another run down in the
street. Both were expected to survive-but only one of them does. As
Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein of Special Branch lies
recuperating in the hospital, a dark shadow from her and Dillon’s
past, scarred deep by hatred, steals across the room and finishes
the job. Consumed by grief and rage, Dillon, Blake, Ferguson, and
all who loved Hannah swear vengeance, no matter where it takes
them. But they have no idea of the searing journey upon which they
are about to embark-nor of the war that will change them all.
Filled with dark suspense, driven by characters of complexity and
passion, Without Mercy once again proves that Jack Higgins is the
dean of intrigue novelists.

Since The Eagle Has Landed—one of the biggest-selling thrillers
of all time—every novel Jack Higgins has written 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, including The Eagle Has Landed,
To Catch a King, On Dangerous Ground, Eye of the Storm, and Thunder
Point. 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, Higgins lives in
Jersey on the Channel Islands.