Customer Reviews

Day of Reckoning

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

I must preface my remaks with two facts. First I have read every one of Jack Higgins books and two I always buy them when they come out, I don't wait for the deep discount.

That being said, Mr Higgins has always written wonderful adventure books without the need for graphic sexual descriptions or terrible violance, just what was needed to make the plot work. I am by far no prude I love descriptive books.

Day of Reckoning is so sad. Here is an author who has had it all. He should have quit period. He lumps all the characters from his previous book into a series of impossible plots. They happen so fast that they make no sense. Had I not read his other books all these characters would be meaningless, he introduces them with, I guess, the premises that the reader has read all his books. There are so many new characters that the reader can't remember who goes with what. Irish, English, Maffia, American, Arab, Jew and so forth. They just keeping turning up.

The saddest is the lack of skill in the plot and the horrible dialogue that is all through the book. You get the impression that he wants it over, I don't blame him. Who could not figure out who wins and who loses in each mini adventure. One "hero" gets shot in the arm other then that the good guys always win.

The first chapter doesn't make sense in relation to the book. Why is it there?

Please don't waste your money and encourge Mr Higgins to write any more. For me it is like losing an old friend.

I saw how fast it hit the best seller list and his name was what did that not the book. That is the advantage of fame, it's too bad he used his to sell this disaster. I am sure that his reputation was the mittigating factor with his publisher.

I call this type of book "popcorn for the mind", a refreshing mental interlude between my reading of weightier tomes. It requires no mental effort, just page turning every minute or so, to race along with the plot. It's not great literature, but I don't think Mr. Higgins intends it to be, he simply wants to entertain his audience, and to me, that's what he does! More of Dillon and Co., please!

After reading all of Higgins' books, and enjoying especially the ones including Dillon and his comrades. I found that his last several books about the ex-terrorist seem merely to be continuations of his previous Dillon thrillers. DAY OF RECKONING seems to be a mere continuation of his previous books. When reading the books in order I felt as if I was just going from one chapter to another. His most recent books have seemed to lack the originality of his earlier Dillon editions. I am a big Jack Higgins fan, and will always be. This book is not bad, it is just too similar to his previous ones. There are only so many different terrorist situations to write about, and in two of Higgins' previous books, Dillon has already taken on the Mafia. It would be neat however if Higgins wrote about Dillon back in the day when he was an IRA gunman and/or an international terrorist. Overall, I would suggest reading this book if you enjoy a good old-fashioned thriller.

I actually did not read the book, but listened to the audiocassete narrated by Frank Muller. Anyone familiar with the audiobooks industry knows that a bad narrator can make a great novel sound absolutely terrible, while a great narrator can make a terrible novel sound great. Frank Muller is a great narrator and can make magic happen with less than average stories. Unfortunately, Muller just could not make it happen with "Day of Reckoning". He could not hide the long and monotonous description of characters that Higgins portrayed, which actuallly proved to be a moot point with a lot of the scenarios anyways. This book doesn't even come close to an anticlimactic ending and in laymen's terms, this novel (isn't good).

Like so many of the other reviewers, I grew to love Jack Higgins through "The Eagle Has Landed". I bought this book by the author. Now I wish I had read the reviews. The characters are incredibly shallow. The dialog rarely ventures below "well if you are a friend of Sean Dillon's, then you're a friend of mine...". Boring reading with a lackluster ending.

Another action packed book by Jack Higgins featuring Sean Dillon at his BEST against the mafia. I couldn't put it down and you won't be able to either!

I really like the Sean Dillon character, but the books are getting worse and worse. There is no suspense. There is total casualness in every character because they know they won't die. They could face the Red Army single handed, any one of them, and come out unscathed. So what is their motivation? None. What is mine to buy the next book? None.

Also, I am not what one would call a liberal, but the way Ferguson and Blake Johnson run around like judge,jury, and executioner offends even me. If they think you are a mobster or terrorist they kill you, and apparently the PM and President trust them so much that they would never reign them in. I'd really like it in the next book if Blake Johnson would find dirt on some guy who gave a couple of million to the presidents campaign, and plan to indiscriminately kill him. It would at least show something that I could beleive when then President told him to just cover it up.

I began by liking this audio version of Jack Higgins <Day of Reckoning> very much, mostly because of the pleasant reading--nay, dramatization--of Patrick Macnee. I am particularly fond of mysteries or adventure tales that concern detailed and elaborate step by step plans to accomplish this or that goal. For example, the Poirot mystery "The ABC Murders" or "The Great Train Robbery." On top of that, they are great fun.

The work under scrutiny here, however, takes itself very seriously--which is certainly laudable--and starts interestingly enough when the Good Guys decide upon a campaign to wipe out the Bad Guys. The problem is that so many sidestreets are entered that the artistic pattern of the story is pretty much lost half way through. Now this would be no Bad Thing if it weren't for the fact that the characters are not only uninteresting but even the Good Guys are pretty unpleasant people. Consequently I would never recommend this book as a good read.

On the other hand, Macnee is so good at his reading, despite the silly inclusion of sound effects, and so multi-voiced as he lets each character speak in a different voice (so far as is reasonable, that is) that I would be willing to give the AUDIO version four stars instead of the three I would give the book itself. Is that fair?

There are some plots which can only be described as formula. One such plot is the revenge novel - the antagonist has done something so bad the hero is out to kill or destroy him in return.

In this overdone genre, for a novel to be worth reading either the characters or the specific situations of the chase must be well drawn and different from what we have seen before in this type of novel.

Unfortunately, this latest novel of Higgins offers nothing new or exciting in this regard. The work is pure formula from start to finish. Futhermore, while I have no objection to a novel opening with a flashforward scene, (it is usually an exciting moment, - grabs our interest and keeps us reading) - I hate it when it takes 95% of the novel to reach that first scene in the first chapter.

Alas, even the last 5% at the end is unsatisfying.

"Flight of Eagles" was much better.

Jack Higgin's latest book is a good read, but very short, taking at most 5 hours to complete. Sean Dillon's fearsome reputation is alluded to often, but rarely seen. The book contains 273 pages. But there are 3 blank pages between each chapter, of which there are 16. 16 x 3 = 48. 273 - 48 = 225 pages of reading material. Each page only has 28 lines; most novels have 40, or more. Each line has an average of 11 words; most novels have 13. So what we end up with is about 135 pages of regular novel sized pages, which in reality makes this a short story (but costs the same as a regular novel). Mr. Higgins' prevous novel was also very short. Perhaps he is running out of material? Or adjectives? Since he has written a lot of novels over the years, perhaps Mr. Higgins should think of retiring. His stories are beginning to show his tiredness.