Customer Reviews

Flight of Eagles

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have read most of Jack Higgin's books and it is my opinion that this is one of his finest works. Harry and Max Kelso are twins with an English father and a German mother who is the heir to a German Baroness. This makes Max, the elder by 2 minutes, the Baron van Halder. After the twin's father dies, the Baroness takes Max with her to Germany. Each of the brothers has a knack for flying and when the war starts up the both join their respected sides.

This wonderfully portrayed novel tells te story of their exploits during the war and is capped off by a very surprising and great ending.

I found the Flight of Eagles by Jack Higgins to be very interesting and intriguing. The book had a strong plot in which Higgins caught the reader's attention by pulling in historical figures with fictional ones leaving you with suspense and thoughts of always wanting to find out what happens next. The books main Characters Harry Kelso and Max Von Halder are described with such realistic traits, thoughts, and actions by Higgins you would believe that they were real fighter pilots. The characters are described with great detail but often it is hard to keep track of them all until the end when Higgins ties them all together. I found it very interesting as to how Higgins used the bear Tarquin as a symbol in the book to tell the story of two separated brothers brought together by war. The realistic details of war, the planes the brothers flew, and the whiskey they drank made it seem as though you could be sitting right there with them. The book is full of suspenseful action that leaves you with a feeling that you just can't stop reading because you are eager to find out what happens next. The books ending is surprising but well organized in bringing all the events to a whole.

Flight of Eagles, by Jack Higgins,1998, Putnam Pub, New York,Hardcover, 336 pp., $17.47 U.S. (from Amazon.com)

"In the early days of World War II, brothers Max and Harry Kelso--born in the U.S. shortly after the first world war to a German war nurse mother and an American fighter ace father--find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. For it seems that forces much greater than they have set into motion an intrigue so devious, so filled with peril, that it will require that they question everything they know, all that they hold most dear. A new thriller by the author of The President's Daughter."

Jack Higgins, who also writes under his real name, Harry Patterson, is a real yarn spinner. Among others, he gave us the 1975 best seller, The Eagle Has Landed. He reminds me of another author whom I knew personally, named R. Wright "Bobby" Campbell, who wrote The Spy Who Sat and Waited.

Both men were high school dropouts, with interesting backgrounds. Higgins' background includes the military, circus roustabout, laborer, and truck driver before he went to college and became a teacher and author.

Bobby Campbell, who lived in Carmel, California when I knew him, would sit across a restaurant table from you and spin a story. He was a natural-born story-teller, and seemingly couldn't help himself.

Another fiction writer of the same ilk was the late Louis L'Amour. He also had a background as a roustabout, truck driver, merchant seaman, prize-fighter and other such jobs, which enabled him to know about life close up and personal.

After all, before you can write convincingly, you need some life experience, and the best of them seem to spend years participating in life before they begin to write about it. But I remember asking Bobby Campbell once how much time he had spent in the Orkneys (the islands North of Scotland) in order to write with such authority about the people and their customs, whom he described so well in The Spy Who Sat and Waited.! He laughed, and said he got everything he needed in the way of research from the encyclopedia.

That will only work, though, for someone who has lived a lot, and observed people closely in their griefs, sorrows, joys, loves and hates. Fiction is an art form, unlike report writing or editorial writing. Not everyone can do it, and of those who can, not all are equal. Jack Higgins is truly one of the master story-tellers.

His protagonists are convincingly drawn, and his plots seem believable even when they are far-fetched. In this one, the Nazis want to assassinate Eisenhower. In The Eagle Has Landed, it was Churchill they were after.

This is good fiction. He works in real people, like Bubi Hartmann, the top-scoring German fighter ace of World War II, and Adolph Galland, who was their highest scoring ace in the Battle of Britain, and who eventually became their chief of fighters. The last I heard, both were still alive.

Higgins weaves a good tale, and you should enjoy this one.

(...)

The first thing I thought when I read this book was, is this for real? Though the basic pconcept of the story, the twins living apart and on opposite sides, is rather contrived, and reminiscent of movies with bad stories, somehow, the way it has been written makes you feel that maybe, maybe all this is a historical account. That is one thing Higgins can do like noone else. However, there is a line to be drawn. I felt that the "twist" in the absolute end, those who have read it know which twist I'm talking about, and those who haven't, I won't spoil it, but the twist is, I felt, unnecessary. The story ties up quite nicely without it, and I can't figure out the author's motivation for that little extra.

But all in all, this play is an A-Class read! Definitely worth reading. It brought back a lot of the flavour of the era which seems to be fast becoming a lost art. All I can say is that this book was engrossing enough to make me miss a couple of appointments, and in the end, that's all that matters!

Great and engrossing novel. Jack Higgins as always has plotted the true story about the twins,Max and Harry Kelso, who were born flyers, in a very enchanting way. Once you start the book you never feel like keeping it down. The book touched me soo much that I thought of nothing but Kelso twins for days.

What I was expecting was how two twin brothers growing up in the very different cultures of their respective environments - one as the sole scion of a Bostonian wealthy in the 1930s US, another among the Prussian aristocrat élite in post WW1 Germany. Would they share the same ideals beneath the contrasting exterior ? Or would they turn into mortal enemies, each a product of his own background ? But instead, all I got was two people going through virtually identical processes, becoming flying aces and shooting down bandits like duck hunting season. Identical promotions every step of the way. They could have interchange their identities at any point as many times as they'd wish without making any difference to the tale. They fly because that's all they want to do, with scant regard for the cause they fought for. At least the Baroness, though not necessarily a very likable woman, knew what she stood for.

Speaking of promotions, in no other book have I seen officers like Munro and Carter being promoted every few chapters/pages. This just stretches the credibility of the book.

As usual, Himmler was up to his old tricks, manipulating everyone and using the same old tricks. Even the officers he entrusted the missions to appear to have the same old struggle between doing a job as a professional and becoming a mere lackey. Somehow, the Third Reich never seems to be short of undercover agents in London ready to work for them.

Higgins would do well to seek better reviews and revisions before getting his book published in the future.

I am Higgin's fan since the Eagle has landed, but I found this book a disappointment. A bit too melodramatic. Abit too easy to guess. I also wish Mr. Higgin would come up with something new and exciting: he can do that, he has done so to us readers before. How many letter signed by Hitler himself were there in that war? (The gimmick was exciting in the Eagle has landed, but to use this trick again in Night of the Fox and again in this book was a bit too much.) How many more islands in the Channel would Higgin propup again? The deception-upon-deception up to a point is boring. In The Eagle has landed German team impersonated as Polish soldiers, only to find out Mr. Churchill was also an imposter. In Night of the Fox somebody acted as Rommel and the hero impersonated as SS officer. In "Filght" - Impersonating again. Please ! Even the Name Kelso was recycled from Night of the Fox. I find this really too much.

This book contains the advantage of getting the reader into the story. The story is of two little boys and their dad was a pilot in WWI and then he passed away and the boys were seperated. One stayed in the US and one went to Germany with his mother. The rest is to be read..........This book holds a captivating a descriptive story. The story line is gripping and possesing. A great read!

this is just a super book. higgins turns a true story into a fast paced adventure story. all the characters are great. this was my 11th higgins book, and one of the best i've read.

Flight Of Eagles is better than most of Higgins' recent books, but is still not much more than a light,entertaining, predictable thriller.

If only Higgins would leave the formulaic style he's developed and return to the great types of stories he used to write--like The Eagle Has Landed and Confessional.