BOOKS The President's Daughter Jack Higgins (Penguin) Another winner from Higgins, who has been churning out compelling thrillers like this for decades now.
His books are simple enough, generally involving terrorist plots and last-minute rescues, with a bit of military hardware thrown in.
The President's Daughter contains all these elements: the terrorist plot is care of a right-wing Israeli organisation; the last-minute rescues down to the British secret service's master enforcer Sean Dillon; and the military hardware a combination of automatic weapons, nifty jets and submersible attack craft.
Dillon, ex-IRA, diminutive but deadly, is called in by his boss Brigadier Ferguson to sort out a mess involving the kidnapping of US President Jake Cazalet's illegitimate daughter.
Conceived in tragic, yet honourable, circumstances in Vietnam years before, the girl's existence was kept secret by Cazalet, to protect his political ambitions. But double agents have the girl tracked down and kidnapped by a shady figure who calls himself Judas. He promises to kill the girl unless the president launches military strikes against Israel's enemies.
So what is it to be, a dead daughter or Armageddon in the Middle East? Perhaps neither, if Dillon can emulate his past successes and infiltrate then terminate Judas' organisation.
