Cold Harbour

Rating:
Summary: Not being an Editor, I can enjoy a great read...
Review: ...and that is precisely what I did with this book. The characters were laid out, then they subtley changed and then yet another twist altered your perception again. I was constantly flipping the pages, ready and as nervous as the characters themselves, to find out what would happen next.

Rating:
Summary: Not being an Editor, I can enjoy a great read...
Review: ...and that is precisely what I did with this book. The characters were laid out, then they subtley changed and then yet another twist altered your perception again. I was constantly flipping the pages, ready and as nervous as the characters themselves, to find out what would happen next.

Rating:
Summary: mediocre at best
Review: Another story of World War II intrigue from Jack Higgins, but unfortunately this isn't one of his better books. Nowhere near as good as his classic, The Eagle Has Landed. Cold Harbour lacks the grand scale of most of Higgins WWII fiction; the result is that you don't much care what happens to the characters, besides the fact that they're not terribly interesting anyway. Not one of Higgins' better efforts by any means.

Rating:
Summary: Goofey in Places
Review: Buy the book to save the cover. It display a German U-Boat. There's a partial photo of a submarine on the back page. And, each chapter is signaled with a small image of a submarine. So, it's about a submarine, right? Wrong. The only boat in the book is a German E-Boat. The cover designer didn't know the difference between a German U- and an E-boat! :-} One has to wonder how this got past the proof readers!! Meanwhile, the story is fair, but in places it leaves the reader saying, "Naw, that wouldn't happen."

Rating:
Summary: Goofey in Places
Review: Buy the book to save the cover. It display a German U-Boat. There's a partial photo of a submarine on the back page. And, each chapter is signaled with a small image of a submarine. So, it's about a submarine, right? Wrong. The only boat in the book is a German E-Boat. The cover designer didn't know the difference between a German U- and an E-boat! :-} One has to wonder how this got past the proof readers!! Meanwhile, the story is fair, but in places it leaves the reader saying, "Naw, that wouldn't happen."

Rating:
Summary: High Adventure set during World War II
Review: Cold Harbour is a very intresting book with a wonderful main character. I would love to read more books with OSS agent Craig Osbourne.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but not his best...
Review: Cold Harbour is fairly good, as it goes, but there are times when the story seems to stretch to meet its own ends...and becomes predictable. Still, there are a couple of pretty good characters, and certainly enough plot twists to keep you interested. And, of course, Higgins gives us, in the person of Dougal Munro, someone we love to hate. Worth one read, anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Lightweight Adaptation of What Seems to a Lightweight Story
Review: David McCallum of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." fame could not save this story no matter how many voices and accents he tried. The people are uninteresting. I cared not whether they lived or died. The plot twists were pretty much out of the "Very Big Book of Spy Story Elements" reference. I've heard it all before, and it wasn't really worth listening to the first time in other stories

Rating:
Summary: A few too many twists but a solid thriller
Review: Higgins has pretty much mastered this genre and has been known to "phone a few in, but COLD HARBOUR does a nice job within the confines of Higgins' rather straight forward style. Playing around with the typical conventions of cross channel warfare, identical twins(never a good idea), and a foray into LeCarre territory, a nice thriller emerges. The story does have its flaws with a rather obvious villain and a few too many twists to hold onto the realism that Higgins generally strives for but overall it works its way to its inevitable conclusion effectively. Other than the ridiculous cover on this paperback, as astutuely mentioned by another reviewer-a U-Boat which has nothing to do with this tales of an E-Boat and espionage, this one's a rather nice page turner and not bad for a quick thriller to fill in on the plane trip or at the beach.

Rating:
Summary: Very good.
Review: I very much enjoyed the characters. The book was filled with suspense and puts the reader right back to the harbour. Overall a good WWII spy novel that was hard to put down. I will read many more of Mr. Higgins' books