Customer Reviews

Touch the Devil

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
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This book centers around three men: Former IRA gunmen Liam Devlin, Martin Brosnan and Frank Barry. Devlin is now semi-retired, working as a professor of English Literature at Trinity College in Dublin. Brosnan is in an island jail off the French coast for shooting a policeman during an IRA arms deal. Barry is now working as a gun-for-hire to various left-wing European terrorist groups, and sometimes the KGB.

After he attempts to kill the British Foreign Secretary on a visit to France, the Prime Minister decides Barry must be dealt with, once and for all. Group 4, the PM's special missions unit headed by Brigadier Charles Ferguson, is given the task.

Ferguson enlists the aid of Devlin and, after he breaks out of the prison, Brosnan, in the mission. There is personal bad blood between Brosnan and Barry. The final confrontation is the best part of the book, when Barry tries to escape England with a stolen rocket-launcher prototype and Brosnan and Devlin hot on his heels.

This book would be enjoyable for Higgins fans, because the characters have either appeared in other Higgins books, or (in the case of Barry) been alluded to. It's nice to get some background on Brosnan, and it makes his actions in "Eye of the Storm" more clear and understandable.

But Barry is the most interesting character. He's Sean Dillon, only less charming and more cold-blooded. The relationship between Barry and Dillon was hinted at in "Eye of the Storm," where Dillon refers to Barry as sort of his mentor. That relationship is interesting, and I would like to see Higgins devote an entire book to it, because I think it could work well.

I would also like Higgins to give us some more background on the time in the late-60s/early-70s when Devlin, Brosnan, Barry, and Dillon were all in the IRA together. Hopefully he'll put out a book on that, too.

As for "Touch the Devil," if you're a Higgins fan, you'll like it. If you're not, it's a good introduction to some of his main characters, but not his best book. I recommend "Eye of the Storm" as an introducition to Higgins, because it'll get you hooked and coming back for more.

Our introduction to the prolific Jack Higgins was his early (1969) thriller "A Fine Night for Dying". That novel, while mildly entertaining, was short and pretty tame by modern standards. With "Devil" we moved ahead several years to a Higgins' work written in 1982 and set in roughly that same time frame. Based on other reviews, apparently the lead characters -- Martin Brosnan, Liam Devlin, and Frank Barry -- appear in several other Higgins stories; but their appearances stand by themselves just fine in this story. A flashback prologue set in Viet Nam during the war introduces us to Brosnan and a female photographer, Anne-Marie Audin, who plays a minor role throughout the book. But the main focus is on Barry, who spends most of his time as a paid assassin with seemingly little loyalty to any cause or country. When he nearly offs a British Foreign Secretary on a visit to France, and slays an important agent instead, the Prime Minister orders her Secret Service to retaliate. The guy in charge, Brigadier Charles Ferguson, deciding it takes a killer to kill one, in effect hires (now) death row convict and ex-IRA terrorist Martin Brosnan to attempt the deed. Brosnan figures Ferguson will never pull off getting him out of the slammer, and so stages a stunning escape instead, setting up a climax where it's bad guy versus bad guy for the suspenseful latter section of the book.

"Devil" is a fun read: it's long enough and complex enough to build and sustain your interest; the characters are interesting; and in the end we're not completely sure which bad guy we want to root for!! Along the way a number of bystanders and lesser characters get knocked off by our author, but some twists and turns fool us on more than one occasion. A somewhat philosophical but stunning denouement even gives us pause for thought. Presuming this is more representative of Higgins' work than our first read, we can see why he has built a loyal following. Enjoy "Touch the Devil"!

I recently picked up this 10-year old book (at least) form a used obook store and ended up finding it one the best I read recently. It just goes to show that good stories never die. The plot seems a bit rusty so far removed from the Cold War, but Higgins' lively writing soon makes you forget the present for a trip into the past - a trip you won't regret.

I recently reread, and rather surprisingly enjoyed Higgins' classic WWII thriller The Eagle Has Landed -- and that led me to seek this out. One of the most engaging elements of that book was the Irish-terrorist-turned-German-agent Liam Devlin, and this book visits him some thirty or so years later, in the midst of the Cold War. After a rather strange Vietnam War-set prologue involving the rescue of a lovely French photographer by an immensely skilled special forces solider, the story shifts to the sometime around 1980 or so. We meet a freelance terrorist who has been paid to assassinate the British Foreign Secretary during a visit to France. This opening is the kind of procedural operation that Higgins excels at, as the master-terrorist Frank Barry puts together a plan and lays his trap. However, there's a British secret agent in on the plot, and the story takes a twist that leads Prime Minister Thatcher to authorize Barry's execution.

This task falls to the Brigadier in charge of such black ops, who, in delving into Barry's past, discovers connections to Liam Devlin, and the Irish-American special forces fella' from the prologue (Martin Brosnan, who apparently appears in some other Higgins' books). The good old "set a thief to catch a thief" plot is brought forth, and the Brigadier coerces Devlin and Brosnan to take out Barry. This sets the stage for two other lovely set pieces: an SAS-ssnatch team renditioning Devlin to England, and an good old-fashioned prison break to spring Brosnan from an island prison off the coast of France. This involves fun stuff like the Corsican mafia, and much more. Meanwhile, Barry has been hired by the KGB to steal a revolutionary new anti-tank rocket weapon that the West Germans have developed and represents a severe blow to Soviet tank supremacy in the European Theater. So, that's yet another fun procedural set piece, as Barry works on that heist while Devlin, Brosnan, and the British try to track him down.

As with "The Eagle Has Landed", Higgins does not plumb particularly deeply into any of the character's psyches. Their motivations are pretty linear and there's nothing unexpected along the way -- however, that's not really much of a concern in a thriller like this. The set pieces are all pretty fun, and the Cold War setting is kind of interesting in its own retro way. The book concludes with another fun set piece, that, while predictable, puts just the right cap on things. All in all, if you like Higgins, you'll probably like this.

Adding to my collection of Jack Higgins "Sean Dillon" series. Book arrived within alloted time and was well packaged.

With a Jack Higgins book you always get a fast paced, easy to read book. He always gets the correct mix of historical facts and a new story line to make his books some of the best of the class. The thing with Higgins is that he probably is not going to go down in history as one of the best writers ever, but the stories are so good with enough action to make you lose track of time. You have fun reading this book and I bet that if this is the first of his books you read you will start to hunt down other works of his. This book is worth the time.

I have read all of the books by Jack Higgins. He is the master of world war II espionage and puts his history knowledge in every book he writes. I have read all of the books. This is a true grabber. Un-down-putable!

This is pure Higgins. A very different ending from his other books. If anyone has not yet read any, this is the one to start with.

Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent conditon

as described, packaged well.

Would use again.