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They call themselves "January 30", after the date of a British massacre in Belfast. They are allied with no one, killing American diplomats and KGB agents, Arabs and Israelis, IRA gunmen and Loyalist soldiers. But they are definitely the enemies of peace—and they are plotting an assassination that will shatter an uneasy truce that reigns in Ireland.Former IRA enforcer Sean Dillon must hunt down January 30 before they kill again. Before they spark another war. Before Dillon himself falls show more prey to the ultimate assassin—the Angel of Death...
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This, the fourth title in the Sean Dillon series, gave me a chance to visit with some old and likable friends once again, but I'm realizing more and more that these old friends are terribly incompetent (mostly Ferguson, the head guy) and would have been removed from their official roles long ago in the real world. The plot is unoriginal; the motives of the bad guys muddled, at best; there are numerous plot developments that require you to merely accept that some people must just be stupid; and the ending is rushed, as if Higgins had run up against a deadline or realized that he was nearing 300 pages and had to wrap things up. On the positive side, the pacing is good and the narrative moves along at a fast clip. I will continue with the show more next in the series, but I'm not overly excited at the prospect. If I were not interested in the ultimate fates of Ferguson, Bernstein and Dillon, I might be giving up on this series at this point. show less
With this work, Higgins has definitely come into his own. The characters are crisp, The plot is a gem. The end result is fully satisfactory. If I hadn't been hooked on this author before, I am now.
This is the perfect book to take with you when you've got a lot of time on your hands; waiting room, plane flight, bus trip, whatever. You can stop and start without missing a thing, because you've probably read it all before. And you'll get through it so fast you won't feel guilty about the time you've spent reading it.
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ThingScore 75
In this by-the-numbers thriller, bad guy turned hero Sean Dillon becomes entangled with a mysterious and indiscriminate terrorist group known as "January 30.'' It helps that the villains of the piece are somewhat interesting ... creating January 30 to use as a cover-up for murders they carry out in their effort to create chaos in the West. Let it be known that all of Higgins's trademark show more weaknesses are evident throughout- -plodding prose, awkward and repetitive exposition, superficial characterization. But so what. The formula is tried and true, and it works. show less
added by Roycrofter
Author Information

211+ Works 33,038 Members
Jack Higgins is a writer and educator, born in Newcastle, England on July 17, 1929. The name is the pseudonym of Harry Patterson. He also wrote under the names of Martin Fallon, James Graham, and Hugh Marlowe during his early writing career. He attended Leeds Training College and eventually graduated from the University of London in 1962 with a show more B.S. degree in Sociology. Higgins held a series of jobs, including a stint as a non-commissioned officer in the Royal House of Guards serving on the German border during the Cold War. He taught at Leeds College of Commerce and James Graham College. He has written more than 60 books including The Eagle Has Landed, Touch the Devil, Confessional, The Eagle Has Flown, and Eye of the Storm. Higgins is also the author of the Sean Dillon series. His novels have since sold over 250 million copies and been translated into fifty-five languages. His title's The Death Trade and Rain on the Dead made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Angel of Death
- Original title
- Angel of death
- Original publication date
- 1995
- People/Characters
- Sean Dillon; Brigadier Charles Ferguson; Hannah Bernstein (Detective Chief Inspector)
- Important places
- Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
- Epigraph
- Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy except force. . . . It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men. -- OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
- First words
- A cold wind blew in from Belfast Lough, driving rain across the City.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Come on, girl dear, let's go," and they walked away, Ferguson following.
- Blurbers
- Clancy, Tom
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 778
- Popularity
- 35,759
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.19)
- Languages
- 12 — Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Portuguese, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 46
- UPCs
- 2
- ASINs
- 14




























































