Publishers Weekly
The solid 15th entry in Higgins's Sean Dillon thriller series (after The Killing Ground) finds aging, arthritic ex-gangster Harry Salter retired from active operations, leaving Dillon, once the IRA's most feared enforcer, as the real leader of the loose gang of stalwart lads who covertly battle the foes of Western civilization. A newcomer to the team, Maj. Harry Miller, on the surface a mild-mannered MP who's in reality the British prime minister's secret hit man, hooks up with series regular Blake Johnson in Kosovo, where the Russians, intent on reclaiming old glory, are stirring up trouble. Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalists are intent on bringing Britain to its knees. The action moves swiftly amid a variety of foreign locales, including Moscow, London and Beirut, to a climax that will leave readers asking themselves, evidence to the contrary, whether the great game is really over. (Aug.)
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The San Diego Union-Tribune
Jack Higgins has produced some of the best suspense fiction of the past fifty years. The Killing Ground demonstrates why, serving up a fast-paced melodrama set in a shadowy and violent world where things—and people—are seldom what they seem.
Library Journal
While in Kosovo, Blake Johnson, an aide to the president of the United States, meets Harry Miller, a military agent for the British prime minister. The two become entangled in an incident with a Russian military squad that results in the British agent shooting a Russian soldier who was trying to torch a mosque. This killing in turn leads to a series of escalating retaliatory actions from the Russians that affect Johnson and Miller, as well as other British and American associates. The book features several characters from earlier Higgins novels (e.g., The Killing Ground, Without Mercy, and Dark Justice) and contains the same kind of action and adventure. A series of flashbacks helps to fill in the background story, so readers unfamiliar with Higgins's continuing series characters will be able to follow the plot. Because Higgins has a large fan base, this book will be of interest in all public libraries.
—Joel Tscherne
Kirkus Reviews
Add a pinch of Putin to the pot, boil for 300-plus pages, serve Higgins Stew to a reliably hungry audience. The Russians, it seems, are in search of lost swagger. According to the best thinkers in U.S. and U.K. corridors of power, they want to replay the Cold War. "But not with nuclear submarines this time," U.S. President Jake Cazalet is warned. Instead, with gas and oil judiciously used for bribing and/or browbeating-as the case warrants-in aid of the Putin vision. What he seeks is restoration, the return of his country to its glory days when no one dared toy with the Russian bear. To thwart and block becomes the task of master spy Sean Dillon and his tiny team of trusty operatives, who will need all the help they can get. Fortunately, it's available. Almost the equal of Dillon in geopolitical cunning-and every bit his equal in death-dealing-is the team's newest recruit, Harry Miller, a sort of latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel. To most observers, Miller appears a staid, color-me-gray MP unaccountably married to the eminently desirable Olivia Hunt, that talented and gorgeous ornament of the British stage. That he's actually a stone killer is, however, known well indeed to a very nasty coterie on the Russian side, who, in retaliation for ravages to their ranks accomplished by Miller forays, arrange a lethal contract. It backfires. Someone dear to all concerned is murdered by mistake. Aroused, considering themselves under attack, Sean Dillon & Co. plan a retaliation in kind and, in the end, as so often before, slay their dozens in defense of the realm. Clearly, Higgins (The Killing Ground, 2008, etc.) has little interest in varying the recipe, and readers who've savored before will no doubtsavor again.
