Touch the Devil

by Jack Higgins

Book Overview

The hero of The Eagle Has Landed returns in a Cold War adventure that pits two IRA veterans against a ruthless mercenary whose only ideology is greed. Terrorist-for-hire Frank Barry has been wreaking... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812828720
• ISBN13: 9780812828726
• Release Date: February 1982
• Publisher: Stein and Day
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Early 80's thriller, nice mix of villains and good guys!

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"!

Impresionante

Higgins entrega todo como siempre. No vas a querer terminarlo. Te tiene en vilo hasta el final.

Thrilling

Jack Higgings always delivers. The book keeps your attention and surprises you. You won't want to finish it.

Good stories never die

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.

Pure Higgins.

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.