Customer Reviews

Bad Company (Sean Dillon)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

See storyline above.

First of all I don't remember Jack Higgins previous novels being this bad. Okay, the plot had potential and the action was there, but this book seemed like it was very rushed. The characters didn't seem there usual self (Dillon being stopped by a tractor in the road? No other explanation?). Please. The brevity of the book and the rushed style (very little depth) made for a very disappointing read.

Not recommended.

If you are a Jack Higgins fan you know what to expect. This book is by the numbers.

Higgins goes into great detail setting up the book with the Hitler diaries subplot. However, this whole section goes nowhere. It could have been much more interesting.

The Von Berger character as a villian does not really work out.

I listened to this on CD. Patrick MacNee does a creditable job as the reader.

If you have nothing better to do, you may want to pick this book up. Otherwise, I would try other works.

Our story begins at the funeral of Kate Rashid, the villainess of Higgins's last thriller, whom undercover enforcer Sean Dillon managed to kill before she wrought her vengeance upon him for killing her three beloved brothers. Dillon and his companions watch on, increasingly uneasy at the presence of Baron Max von Berger, a multi-millionaire friend of the Rashid's, who has now interhited their old empire in the Hazar that is worth billions.

Now, von Berger himself wants revenge, and it is a matter of honour. Kate Rashid once saved his life, and she was a very dear friend. He is determined to exact justice on those who conspired to destroy the Rashid's and their empire: Dillon, his friend in the government General Charles Ferguson, and their colleague, White House insider Blake Johnson. But, unknown to them, Berger has a secret weapon. In the waning days of WWII Hitler entrusted von Berger, his close aide, with his diary detailing the final six months of the war, and a meeting he had with President Roosevelt which could have stopped the war before it started.

Bad Company is another of Higgins's increasingly by-the-numbers, cliched, formulaid thrillers that just reuse aspects from his other books (boats blown-up, planes crashed, assassinations, etc), but it is a primse example. A one character says of the events in the book, "It's like a bad novel", and that is exactly what they are. They are the evnets of a bad novel. however, they are also the envets of an entertaining story, and this is exactly what this is. A great story, a nice adventure. It's fast, thrilling, enjoyable, nothing more. nothing less. If you are looking for great writing, don't come here. If you're looking for a plot that wont fall apart under close scrutiny, also don't come here. If you're simply looking for a quick, easy read that's a bit James Pattersonesque in style, then do come here.

There's only one little problem, really: Dillon is flat and cardboard. Higgins has reduced him merely to proper nouns and pronouns, and as a result the reader tends to prefer the villains, who are more colourful, and that leads to dissappointment come the finale (which is a tad rushed), in which, of course, the heroes unfailingly win.

Still, Bad Company is light and easy reading, and it's relatively easy to overlook that almost everything within has been lifted from various other Jack Higgins books. This is about as close to literature as a TV guide, but, then, it doesn't intend to be.

Any reader expecting great literature will be disappointed and, to be fair, having read about a dozen of Higgins' books myself, such expectations would be more than foolish. Higgins is a well-oiled, formulaic writer, able to produce simple, direct sentences, basic emotions, and some color, using a relatively standard set of "high" elements. In this case, using foggy London, the stormy Irish Sea, forested Germany, and Middle Eastern deserts, he provides some set pieces of almost chivalrous interaction among the caricatured cast: the reformed IRA member, the London mobsters, the head of a shadowy British counterintelligence unit, the crippled computer wonk, the very attractive Oxford assistant, the noble Nazi, the secretive Swiss banker, the out-of-wedlock son, and the elderly one-time secretary to Hitler. Both sides of the battle have polite face-to-face meetings where they swear they will kill each other. What are they waiting for? Characters reveal incredible skills with obscure or unrelated tasks, from playing the piano to speaking multiple languages to working explosives. Sean Dillon could be James Bonds' darker side, or brother abandoned at birth.

Moving quickly across time and place, Higgins's prose is as sparse as Hemingway's yet without any of the emotion or power. The "emotional event" that drives the protagonist, seems small and insignificant. Higgins is more fascinated with food (lots of bacon and eggs), hotels (the Dorchester), restaurants, booze (make it Bushmills), weapons (everybody loves their Walthers), estates (German, of course) and haunts (pubs, night clubs, swank clubs, the London docks) than with his paper mache characters. Even his layout is thin: 282 pages, large font, extra spacing between lines, blank pages between chapters and sections. This is a quick read because the story is so short. Even the stereotypic plot 'device', the Hitler diary, has no real use in the story. remove it entirely and you lose little of the story.

One star for weaving a credible (if poorly researched) story and another for making it easy to digest. But that's it. I'm swearing off Higgins.

This is the first Jack Higgins' book I've ever read, and I regret that I've even read it at all. What a waste of my time! I almost couldn't and didn't want to finish it. Since I don't have any prior knowledge of all the characters that appeared in other Higgins' books, I thought, except for Baron Von Berger, NONE of the characters have developed enough depth for me to know and to even care about them. As far as I know they're nothing but a group of thugs and murderers that are feuding over personal vindication in the name of contrived heroic excuses. Halfway through the book, as soon as Baron Von Berger faded into oblivion, I started losing interest in this book. The motivation for Von Berger to declare war against Dillon & Ferguson over Kate Rashid was, at best, weak and contrived. I couldn't find character to relate to or to root for. The plot's thin and the emotion's void. It's extremely disappointing.

I usually love Higgins novels, be they WWII or other, but this one was horendous. I found myself on page 200 waiting for something to happen. Then I was at page 286, the end of the novel, and nothing ever happened. It seems that he was in need to get a novel out for a contract with the publisher or something.

Jack Higgins has woven a cast of characters that are daring and very real in this dangerous world. He has created a separate hit squad on either side of the Atlantic to deal with baddies - and one of the best characters he has in Sean Dillon, formerly of the IRA and now working for the government. He is a killing machine. Yet it is tearing him apart. He is a shark that must keep moving or else he'll die, and he knows it and must go on.

This book gives more info on the Rashid family and how Baron Von Berger made his wealth in part of the Rashids and part of his secret possession of Hitler's diary that implicates the current American President Cazalet's father during world war peace negotiations. The good guys go after the bad company to retreive the diary and stop Von Berger

Will the real Jack Higgins please stand up. Used to be all you had to do was see the name Jack Higgins and you just HAD to buy the book because it would be a winner. Not this time. Maybe it's the glut of World War II books or the interest in maniacal psychopaths such as Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, but this book didn't interest me whatsoever. The plot -- if you really want to call it a plot -- doesn't start until mid-read, and it is a very hazy plot at that. The ending was not an ending, but more of a stop sign -- put up at the end of a circuitous road involving a search for Adolph's Swiss bank fortune. Too many characters, good guys and bad guys, spoil the too-leisurely flow of the story line.

If you've ever heard a great professional reader like Frank Miller or David Case, you'll know why I can't stand it when authors or actors narrate a book. Patrick MacNee has no feel and his accents are atrocious. His idea of an Italian accent is to add an 'a' to the end of every word. Just awful!

Jack Higgins had some incredible books, but this is.... one word that comes to mind "terrible". Its confusing, badly written, hurried (especially the end). Higgens can do and has done much, much better. The book actually upset me since the bad guys seemed to be the good guys and the good guys the bad.

Better luck next time. Don't bother reading this book, unless you want to turn the last page with a very sour look on your face. Suprised it was even published. Read The Eagle has Landed, its great.

Hope this helped.