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Midnight Runner

Midnight Runner

List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $19.77
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: WUI (of Bushmills)?
Review: Thin and utterly unrealistic plot, poorly written - definitely expected more. Unnecessary detours, constant repetitions and not just the annoying references to Bushmills and unleavened bread - was somebody paid by the word? To consumers: Save your money. To the editors: Did anybody read this before publication?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Sean Dillon Saves the Day
Review: This is a sequel to Higgins's thriller, Edge of Danger, in which Kate Rashid, a wealthy, murderous, Arab woman tried to assassinate the American President, but failed and saw her three brothers killed in the attempt. In Midnight Runner, Kate swears vengance on the President and all who foiled her. In the weakest aspect of the plot, the President, with awesone power at his disposal, instead asks Daniel Quinn, a former American Special Forces sergeant, to investigate and derail the all-powerful Kate Rashid. When I read this in the early chapters, I thought, "Oh, no, not another John Wayne type defeating an army of bad guys with one hand. We've seen it in a hundred bad novels and movies." But Higgins is too clever for such banality, and Quinn fizzles into ineffectiveness. It remains for our old friend, Sean Dillon, ex-IRA operative, now with a British spy agency, to go after Kate Rashid and her minions. She plans to bring down the American President by cutting off the major supply of oil to the United States. She also plans to murder everyone, including Sean Dillon, who helped kill her brothers. Dillon, together with his boss, General Ferguson, and other friends, stops her, but it's a big fight. There is plenty of action throughout the book, and the final chapters will keep you turning those pages.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is another great book by Jack Higgens, well worth a read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sean Dillon: "As ever was"
Review: This series of books about the converted IRA killer and his friends is one of my all-time favorites! Let's be frank, however; this is not great literature. The characters are mere brush strokes, there's very little exposition, the plots are see-through, and there always tends to be a happy ending. That being said, the books are just full of non-stop excitement, to the extent that you overlook the flaws in the work. Once you start reading these books, you're hooked from beginning to end, and sometimes it's impossible to put down until you've finished reading, even if it's the wee hours of the morning, and your eyes are burning from lack of sleep! That's the highest accolade I can give a book: that it kept me up way beyond my bedtime. It'll happen to you also.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Blockbuster Sequel
Review: This was an excellent follow-up to Edge of Danger. It had all the right elements. The action was very intense and plot was compelling with the different twists and turns. I love Kate Rashid and Sean Dillion not to the evil Chauncey. This is definitely not a disappointment.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ashamed
Review: Trick me once...Shame on you...Trick me twice...Shame on me.
Well, consider me shamed. The first time I ran into what I think is fraud was the Grisham book "The Brethern" That was the "Shame on You" Now, after Higgins latest..Shame on Me. I was so disappointed. Jack Higgins can write better than this. I want to know if this was one of those "Hurry Jack, we paid you upfront for x number of books and you're behind schedule. Punch one out." Shame should also go to his editor/publisher for allowing something like this to go out with his name.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Back in action
Review: What can I say?! The dynamic team of Blake Johnson and Sean Dillion are at it again. This reviting sequil to Edge of Danger was fabulous. I can hardly wait to read the next installment of these two adventures. Not since the ORIGINAL I Spy team Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott(y) has there been a greater spy team.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Another Higgins Hack Job: Midnight Runner
Review: When I read a Jack Higgins novel these days, it is with a certain kind of sadness. Gone are the complex plots, intriguing characters, and story twists that marked so much of his earlier work. Now, he seems to have become nothing more that a word hack, cranking out a weak novel every year. At the same time, I keep reading them hoping to see flashes of past brilliance. Unfortunately, Mr. Higgins continues the recent tradition in his writing where the good guys do evil (at times) for the right cause and the bad guys are misguided and do evil for the wrong cause.

In this case, the lovely Kate Rashid leads the evil forces that plan to destroy the world, as we know it. The novel follows up on the situation at the end of his last novel, Edge Of Danger, where her three brothers were dead at the hands of the good guys leaving Kate Rashid vowing vengeance. As Countess of Loch Dhu, Kate Rashid controls the vast holdings of the Rashid Empire. Like the last book, the flow of oil to the United States and England is her weapon to topple governments. But, she also seeks to inflict personal pain on Sean Dillon, Blake Johnson, General Charles Ferguson and the others she holds personally responsible for the deaths of her brothers. As she assembles her supporters and pawns, so too does General Ferguson assemble his pawns and supporters. Soon, all the usual suspects are in play and a plot that could be sketched on the back of a bar napkin is underway.

This novel continues in the recent tradition of Jack Higgins. The writing is weak, the character development is exceedingly limited, the style is poor and the scenic descriptions are poor. The sameness of his recent novels continues and the reader is left with the sense that this has been read before, many times. It is unfortunate that he continues in the slide from the promise of his early novels to a writing style and effort that just seems to be going through the motions for a few sales. This author has talent and expertise that he simply is not using, for whatever reason, and that is a shame. It may be time to forget this author and move on because like many a great athlete that pushes past his prime, he simply does not have it anymore and that is a shame.


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