Without Mercy - Jack Higgins

...before, but I was lent Without Mercy and decided to give it a go. I was a little dubious as on the front cover it states 'the unstoppable Sean Dillon is back' and as I don't know who this Sean Dillon character is, I thought I may have missed some important back history. The book claimed to be 'a fierce thriller of terrorism, murder and revenge', and so I thought it would be quite fast-paced and exciting.

As I read the first couple of ...
...the Sean Dillon character. I found that none of the characters were given any real depth or back story. By half way through the book, this remained the case and I began to get frustrated.

I can forgive an author poorly developed characters if there is a compelling storyline to the book, but I was disappointed by this as well. Half way through the book I felt that nothing had really happened, a couple of deaths and the beginning of a ... more

I've never read any Jack Higgins before, but I was lent Without Mercy and decided to give it a go. I was a little dubious as on the front cover it states 'the unstoppable Sean Dillon is back' and as I don't know who this Sean Dillon character is, I thought I may have missed some important back history. The book claimed to be 'a fierce thriller of terrorism, murder and revenge', and so I thought it would be quite fast-paced and exciting.

As I read the first couple of chapters, I realised it didn't matter that I didn't know the Sean Dillon character. I found that none of the characters were given any real depth or back story. By half way through the book, this remained the case and I began to get frustrated.

I can forgive an author poorly developed characters if there is a compelling storyline to the book, but I was disappointed by this as well. Half way through the book I felt that nothing had really happened, a couple of deaths and the beginning of a chase, but nothing that made me want to keep reading.

The story goes:
Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein is in hospital, slowly recovering. She is 'helped on her way' by a nurse whose body is then found in a canal near to the hospital. Two deaths in one chapter isn't bad going.
Hannah's colleagues and friends swear vengeance. One of these is Sean Dillon, the other key characters are Blake and Ferguson.
There is a Russian named Belov who Dillon is meant to have killed (he reported him dead and is supposedly pretty much infallible) but who is suddenly being heard of alive and well, and upsetting the British secret service.
Dillon and friends fly off and I think chase Belov, who is dead but an actor is pretending to be him. They flit from country to country, beating up and killing many in their paths (but I didn't find these scenes exciting, as they can be, nor were they over graphic as I have experienced before).

I would usually give more of an idea of the plot, but I didn't understand this book! I found myself reading it and wondering why it was jumping from the IRA to Russia, back to England, Ibiza suddenly appeared. I didn't identify with the characters in the slightest and I could not see a storyline, nor did I care what happened.

One of my favourite things about this book is that although it looks long at 454 pages, the unusual layout of inch-thick margins on both side of the text (leaving only about 8 words per line) and the chapters which jump from country to country with one page to announce the new country followed by a blank side before the chapter begins, the story is fairly short and so can be read quickly.

As you've probably guessed, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I didn't understand it, and didn't enjoy it, but I might try other Jack Higgins books as I've heard good things about him in the past. I was really disappointed by this book, I was really prepared to love it, but it didn't live up to my hopes at all.
 

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