A Prayer for the Dying by Jack Higgins

 

(pb; 1973)

From the back cover

“Fallon was the best you could get with a gun in his hand. His track record went back a long and shady way.

“This time the bidding came from Dandy Jack Meehan, an underworld baron with a thin varnish of respectability. Not exactly the type you’d want to meet in a dark alley.

“The job Dandy Jack wanted doing was up North, but when Fallon got there he soon found himself changing sides—which put him in opposition to Meehan, a place where life expectancy suddenly gets very short indeed.”

 

Review

Prayer is an excellent, grip-you-from-the-get-go thriller with great, unique and memorable characters, character- and morality-based gravitas and action, as well a potent blend of omnipresent themes, e.g., regret, religion, imperialism, overall morality, etc., that—along with Higgins’s superbly sketched characters, clever-twists, and cut-to-it writing, lift this above the usual thriller. It might not go anywhere you don’t expect at times, but it’s so well-written and character-true that a certain inevitability is a virtue here. Worth owning, this.

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The resulting film was released in released in the UK on May 13, 1987. Its stateside release happened on September 11, 1987. Prayer director Mike Hodges, along with one of its co-stars, Mickey Rourke, forswore the studio’s theatrical cut of the film. Screenwriters: Edmund Ward and Martin Lynch. (Studio: The Samuel Goldwyn Company, which trimmed Prayer so it would play less like a drama with occasional violence, and more like an action movie for American audiences. Mike Hodges’s director's cut is said to exist, but it has not been released.)

Solo by Jack Higgins

(hb; 1980) 

From the inside flap

"John Mikali, the central character of Solo, has three superior talents. He is a world-famous concert pianist. He is a lover of remarkable accomplishments, who plays at lovemaking with the same brilliance with which he dominates an enthralled audience. And unknown to anyone except a lawyer named DeVille, he has become the perfect assassin, who at first killed only for revenge and now has become the ultimate international hit man. 

 "Of the many women who come fleetingly within Mikali's embrace, only one attracts his continued attention, perhaps because she is beautiful, or intelligent, or possibly because Dr. Katherine Riley is America's foremost authority on the terrorist killer mentality. 

"As Solo opens, Mikhail shoots at point blank range. . . a Londoner named Maxwell Joseph Cohen, chairman of the largest clothing manufacturing firm in the world. As Mikhail makes his escape by car, the police in pursuit, he finds himself in a long, narrow tunnel, and what happens in that tunnel clinches Mikali's fate for it brings Colonel Asa Morgan after him. 

"Morgan is a soldier's soldier, a magnificent fighter. . . What Asa Morgan wants now more than anything else on earth, is the life of the man whom the police know only as the Cretan Lover. Morgan has few clues to the Cretan's identity, but his relentless pursuit brings him to the expert on terrorists, Dr. Katherine Riley, who finds him as attractive as he does her. Thus begins. . . a triangle [in which] a woman finds herself in love with two men determined to destroy each other. . ." 

 Review

Solo is a lean, gripping, waste-no-words, near-impossible-to-set-down thriller, with well-developed characters. One of my all-time favorite reads. Worth owning, this.

Hell Is Too Crowded by Jack Higgins

(pb; 1962) 

From the back cover

"It all seemed to be chance... 

 

"The strange young woman appearing suddenly. 

The invitation to her flat. The offer of a drink. 

The drink was the last thing Matt Brady remembered. 

 "When he woke, the police were swarming about -- and the body of the girl was lying near him on the floor. Of course, they did not believe his story. He was charged with murder and sent to prison for life.

 "There were few prisons strong enough to hold Matt Brady. And Matt knew he had to break out of this one fast. He had to find out the truth behind this bizarre nightmare. Who wanted to frame him? Who wanted him out of the way? 

 "All he remembered was a face in the fog, a half-remembered face that was his only link with sanity..."

Review

Hell is a lean, hard-to-put-down noir-esque/action novel that grabs you from the first word and doesn't let up. Higgins's story is fast-moving and straight-forward, with a few plot-tasty twists that keep with noir standards. It doesn't stand out, storywise, but Higgins's exemplary writing renders that point moot—Matt Brody is a perfect noir creation: pissed-off, smart, driven, and violent (or roughly tender) at the right moments. Worth your time, great for an afternoon read. Excellent B-movie material, in the right cinematic hands.