Prolific author of yarns of spy craft and intrigue, Higgins returns to his Sean Dillon series with a revenge tale featuring a newly revived al-Qaeda, whose latest leader, "The Master," harangues the heroic cast of the "Prime Minister's private army" with endless threatening telephone calls and manipulates sundry miscreants into acts of random violence against Dillon and his comrades. Along the way a treasonous plot against the U.S. President is uncovered and quashed, and the mystery of a lost treasure ship is solved. Verdict With a villain whose main weapon seems to be a cell phone with unlimited international minutes, a cast of characters straight out of an English drawing-room comedy, and a barely discernible plot, this program is only redeemed by the dedicated exertions of award-winning narrator Michael Page, whose acting prowess somehow makes this mess of a book entertaining. Recommended for die-hard Higgins fans only.-Forrest Link, Coll. of New Jersey, Ewing © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Bestseller Higgins's routine 22nd Sean Dillon thriller (after 2014's Rain on the Dead) pits the former IRA assassin against the new leader of al-Qaeda, who calls himself simply the Master. Dillon took out the previous Master, and his successor is plotting his revenge. Dillon's allies include Vietnam vet Blake Johnson, who runs the Basement, the American president's "personal security department"; and Dillon's cousin Hannah Flynn, who, although just 19, "had grown up in an IRA family and knew how to handle a gun." Hannah's skills come in handy when she and another woman are attacked, but, as is typical of the genre, violent events that would unsettle a real person have minimal emotional impact. Characters act in reckless ways that will distance some readers from any sense of reality. Others may not care for the unsophisticated politics. For example, a supposedly savvy former president asserts that the U.S. thought at one point "that the deaths of Saddam, Gadaffi, and bin Laden would cure the ills of the Middle East." Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency (U.K.). (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.