Jay Rothermel
4th April 2009, 18:07
Keeping the British end up
Jack Higgins’ Drink with the Devil (1996)
Jack Higgins has recently been expending his energies on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab “war on terror” novels supporting the Washington-London axis of evil. They are all special pleading and double-dealing the plot against the reader. Drink with the Devil comes from the 1975-1995 high-water mark of Higgins’ career. Before the glib comic book laziness took over, Higgins was the finest thriller writer working in the UK.
The “devil” of the title is Sean Dillon, a former cadre of the Provisional IRA. This novel bridges the great divide in his professional life: the early sections of the novel are set in 1985 when he worked as an agent and troubleshooter for PIRA head Jack Barry, and then the action skips ahead to 1995, when Dillon is living the good life in London as an agent and troubleshooter for Brigadier Charles Ferguson’s secret security service, the “Prime Minister’s private army.”
The subject of Drink with the Devil is the “patriot game” between Ulster loyalist Michael Ryan and Barry over a truck full of what Higgins calls “gold bullion” Each side wants the stolen loot to continue what Higgins calls the "civil war," having no faith in the U.S.-brokered “peace” between Sinn Fein and Downing Street.
Drink with the Devil features the usual scenes from previous Higgins novels: scuba diving, travel in private planes and boats, the ordering of Krug non-vintage champagne, the moody smoking of many cigarettes, and cocking a snook at security officials of the hidebound UK government. We also have the well-loved scene where the current P.M. pauses from working his way through a pile of documents to express admiration for Sean Dillon.
It is easy to kid Higgins for repetition of scenes and mannerisms as his oeuvre progresses. But the repetition has its uses, and popular series fiction would be lost without it. A useful monograph cries out to be written about secret buried treasures and legacies that populate Higgins’ novels. Another subject: the escape of prisoners whose knowledge is needed to find said treasures and legacies. Drink with the Devil features both a buried (sunken) treasure and a prison/hospital escape. It would be hard to match and economy and precision with which Higgins handles both. Indeed, the underwater climax that would take a chapter out of the life of a Tom Clancy novel is thrown-off by Higgins in a few paragraphs with supremely dismissive gusto.
Central to Drink with the Devil is the character Kathleen Ryan, a true victim of the Patriot Game. Her tragedy is the tragedy of generations of Unionists who saw the future of Ireland only in continued partition and permanent war by occupier against occupied as London continued to prop-up Ulster’s Quislings.
Higgins is clearly on the side of what polite journalism calls the “peace process.” This “peace process” is, from London’s side, a way to prolong occupation. Sinn Fein views it as one more negotiation on the way to a united Ireland. Higgins clearly backs the London side of the argument politically, while letting a little Sinn Fein politics breathe for purposes of ambience.
One of the many pleasures to be found in a Jack Higgins novel is the return of characters from previous works. While all his novels since the early 1990s center around Sean Dillon’s work for the greater maintenance of the British Empire, a few also pay homage to the ur-Dillon: Liam Devlin. Drink with the Devil features a few middle chapters of Devlin’s kibitzing on the hunt for Michael and Kathleen Ryan as that pair and their allies make plans to retrieve the gold bullion. Liam Devlin made his first appearance in The Eagle Has Landed (1975), one of the great bestsellers of the 1970s and the novel that made Jack Higgins’ reputation. Always a pleasure.
* * * *
Dove Audio: Unabridged 1996
A Jack Higgins novel can usually be read faster than the audio book version takes to play. But a Higgins audio book is usually the perfect length for one week’s worth of commute.
The audio version of Drink with the Devil, however, is pretty hard going, no matter what one’s destination. The fault, alas, lies in the performance by TV actor Patrick Macnee. He cannot do an Irish or a U.S. accent, and Drink with the Devil features plenty of both. Macnee has also made the unfortunate aesthetic choice of having his Italian-American gangsters “talk-a like-a these-a.”
Forget the Dove audio version and read the novel: we can all do the voices better ourselves anyway, and in half the time.
Jack Higgins’ Drink with the Devil (1996)
Jack Higgins has recently been expending his energies on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab “war on terror” novels supporting the Washington-London axis of evil. They are all special pleading and double-dealing the plot against the reader. Drink with the Devil comes from the 1975-1995 high-water mark of Higgins’ career. Before the glib comic book laziness took over, Higgins was the finest thriller writer working in the UK.
The “devil” of the title is Sean Dillon, a former cadre of the Provisional IRA. This novel bridges the great divide in his professional life: the early sections of the novel are set in 1985 when he worked as an agent and troubleshooter for PIRA head Jack Barry, and then the action skips ahead to 1995, when Dillon is living the good life in London as an agent and troubleshooter for Brigadier Charles Ferguson’s secret security service, the “Prime Minister’s private army.”
The subject of Drink with the Devil is the “patriot game” between Ulster loyalist Michael Ryan and Barry over a truck full of what Higgins calls “gold bullion” Each side wants the stolen loot to continue what Higgins calls the "civil war," having no faith in the U.S.-brokered “peace” between Sinn Fein and Downing Street.
Drink with the Devil features the usual scenes from previous Higgins novels: scuba diving, travel in private planes and boats, the ordering of Krug non-vintage champagne, the moody smoking of many cigarettes, and cocking a snook at security officials of the hidebound UK government. We also have the well-loved scene where the current P.M. pauses from working his way through a pile of documents to express admiration for Sean Dillon.
It is easy to kid Higgins for repetition of scenes and mannerisms as his oeuvre progresses. But the repetition has its uses, and popular series fiction would be lost without it. A useful monograph cries out to be written about secret buried treasures and legacies that populate Higgins’ novels. Another subject: the escape of prisoners whose knowledge is needed to find said treasures and legacies. Drink with the Devil features both a buried (sunken) treasure and a prison/hospital escape. It would be hard to match and economy and precision with which Higgins handles both. Indeed, the underwater climax that would take a chapter out of the life of a Tom Clancy novel is thrown-off by Higgins in a few paragraphs with supremely dismissive gusto.
Central to Drink with the Devil is the character Kathleen Ryan, a true victim of the Patriot Game. Her tragedy is the tragedy of generations of Unionists who saw the future of Ireland only in continued partition and permanent war by occupier against occupied as London continued to prop-up Ulster’s Quislings.
Higgins is clearly on the side of what polite journalism calls the “peace process.” This “peace process” is, from London’s side, a way to prolong occupation. Sinn Fein views it as one more negotiation on the way to a united Ireland. Higgins clearly backs the London side of the argument politically, while letting a little Sinn Fein politics breathe for purposes of ambience.
One of the many pleasures to be found in a Jack Higgins novel is the return of characters from previous works. While all his novels since the early 1990s center around Sean Dillon’s work for the greater maintenance of the British Empire, a few also pay homage to the ur-Dillon: Liam Devlin. Drink with the Devil features a few middle chapters of Devlin’s kibitzing on the hunt for Michael and Kathleen Ryan as that pair and their allies make plans to retrieve the gold bullion. Liam Devlin made his first appearance in The Eagle Has Landed (1975), one of the great bestsellers of the 1970s and the novel that made Jack Higgins’ reputation. Always a pleasure.
* * * *
Dove Audio: Unabridged 1996
A Jack Higgins novel can usually be read faster than the audio book version takes to play. But a Higgins audio book is usually the perfect length for one week’s worth of commute.
The audio version of Drink with the Devil, however, is pretty hard going, no matter what one’s destination. The fault, alas, lies in the performance by TV actor Patrick Macnee. He cannot do an Irish or a U.S. accent, and Drink with the Devil features plenty of both. Macnee has also made the unfortunate aesthetic choice of having his Italian-American gangsters “talk-a like-a these-a.”
Forget the Dove audio version and read the novel: we can all do the voices better ourselves anyway, and in half the time.