Rain on the Dead

October 20, 2014
In bestseller Higgins’s lackluster 21st Sean Dillon thriller (after 2013’s The Death Trade), the legendary ex-IRA gunman plays a largely supporting role. The shadowy Master, who controls a network of international terrorist groups, plots to assassinate Jake Cazalet, a former American president who lives on Nantucket. Two Chechen brothers travel to the resort island to do the job, but fortunately Gen. Charles Ferguson, who commands a secret British antiterrorist unit, and his two chief agents, Dillon and Capt. Sara Gideon, have just arrived for a visit, and are armed and ready when the hapless pair launch their doomed assault. More attempts to kill Cazalet follow. A few of the good guys die in the line of duty, but new recruits quickly fill their places. Higgins appears to be going through the motions in this tired entry. Series fans will hope he returns to form in the next installment. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency (U.K.).

November 15, 2014
An elite British paramilitary unit squares off with a mysterious new al-Qaida master.Best-seller Higgins (Death Trade, 2013, etc.) returns with another round of gratuitous shoot-ups, back-room cloak-and-dagger dealings, and hardened men willing to exchange death for money. With an eclectic cast of characters pushing their own agendas weaving in and out of the story, former IRA assassin Sean Dillon and decorated Afghan War hero Sara Gideon are the central protagonists once again. The novel begins with Gideon and Dillon as house guests at former U.S. President Jake Cazalet's Nantucket home, and the action immediately takes off when the duo saves Cazalet from an assassination attempt at the hands of Chechen gunmen. While the Chechens don't live long enough to do much talking, Dillon uncovers some of his old IRA cohorts providing assistance in the botched operation. With this lead, Dillon's and Gideon's colleague, the wheelchair-bound Maj. Giles Roper, is able to connect the assassination job with the enigmatic new al-Qaida master, who may be operating inside the U.K. This shadowy figure is committed to killing the former president, and he even adds Gideon and Dillon to the list of intended targets. To carry out this operation, the al-Qaida master begins to contact experienced killers from dissident Irish groups and even a former member of the British army. As attacks and gunfights unfold from one incident to another, the underlying plans of this new version of al-Qaida remain unclear. Although there's plenty of violence, we're left with a rather flimsy storyline. A good read for those who want bullets without the complexity or distraction of a tight narrative.

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November 15, 2014
A group of assassins have just tried to kill a former American president. Fortunately, they failed. Unfortunatelyfor the hired killers, at leastthe former president just happens to have a couple of uniquely qualified individuals as his guests: Sean Dillon, the former IRA assassin who's now one of British intelligence's top operatives, and Sara Gideon, another trained killer turned intelligence agent. Vowing to find out who's responsible for the attempted assassination, Sean and Sara soon uncover the existence of a new terrorist threat, someone who seems determined, no matter what the cost, to murder the ex-president. This is another solid entry in the Sean Dillon series, which has been running since 1992 (with a new book pretty much every year), and it has the usual satisfying mixture of action and character. Higgins is a veteran of the genre, and if his work has drifted into something resembling formula over the years, it's an agreeable-enough formula and continues to draw readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014

Two Chechen mercenaries are wiped out in a failed attempt to assassinate former U.S. president Jake Cazalet on Nantucket--thank goodness black ops specialist Sean Dillon and his colleague Afghan war hero Capt. Sara Gideon were with him at the time. But how the mercenaries learned that Cazalet was on the island is another, scary story

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