Hands up everyone who knew Jack Higgins was still out there and writing books. No, me neither.

But he is. He has written more books in his career than we can find fingers and toes in the KS office to count them on. Over sixty, apparently, and he is a mere 77 years old, which means there will be many more to come. As a younger man he was churning them out at three or four a year.

Taking a trip down memory lane, reading the man again after all these years, it’s interesting to note how things don’t change too much in this fictional universe. You have the crusty bods of military intelligence, all stiff uppers, tracking down the agents of wrongdoing and setting them bang to rights, or more often, just shooting them. Another thing that hasn’t changed for this writer who saw military service on the East German border during the Cold War is the enemy. Higgins doesn’t seem to have got his head around the fact that the Soviet Union gave up being the Soviet Union quite a few years ago. Without Mercy has agent Sean Dillon tracking down pesky Russkies under the diabolic control of one Vladimir Putin who is bent on stealing control of the world’s oil — nice premise, wrong president.

The novel follows on from Dark Justice, but you don’t have to have read that one to get this one. Sean Dillon’s lady friend and special agent was apparently injured in the line of duty in that story, and in this one, before she can get out of hospital, she is murdered. This puts Dillon in a bit of a mood, more than the matter of the world’s oil falling into the wrong hands. Now read on for a gripping yarn of the old school.

Kansai Scene, April 2006

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