A Fine Night for Dying - Jack Higgins

Over the years I’ve read a number of books by Jack Higgins (whose real name is Harry Patterson) and enjoyed them all, but I haven’t read anything by him in a while. To remedy that I picked up a recent reissue of A FINE NIGHT FOR DYING, originally published in 1969. This is the next-to-last book in a series about British secret agent Paul Chavasse, which was first published under the pseudonym Martin Fallon and later reprinted under Patterson’s better-known pen-name.

I hadn’t read any of the Paul Chavasse books until now. There’s a certain similarity to James Bond: Chavasse reports to an M-like boss who has a flirtatious secretary like Miss Moneypenny, and Chavasse can also be brutally and efficiently violent when he needs to be. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, though, at least in this book. Although it has an international espionage angle, at heart it’s really a gritty little crime story about a ring of smugglers who bring people without visas into England. Chavasse is given the assignment of breaking up this smuggling operation, and to do so he has to pretend to be a fugitive from the law himself.

This is a tightly written book, the sort of lean little British thriller that doesn’t get written much anymore, if at all. A couple of years ago I read a debut thriller from an author who has gone on to be a best-seller. I remember thinking that it had a pretty good plot, but Nick Carter could have handled the same plot in a third as many pages. The same is true of Paul Chavasse. There are no wasted words here. Despite that, the story didn’t really draw me in until the extended action sequence that closes the book. The plot doesn’t have much in the way of twists and turns; the only real “surprise” is telegraphed early on. But the action scenes are very good, and in the end I enjoyed the book enough to make me want to read more of Higgins’ work again. I’ll probably pick up another of his novels soon.