Drink with the Devil (1996)

[Jack Lowry]

Jack Higgins’ Drink with the Devil (1996)

Dove Audio: Unabridged 1996



Jack Higgins has recently been expending his energies on anti-Muslim,
anti-Arab “war on terror” novels supporting the Washington-London axis
of evil. They are all special pleading and double-dealing the plot
against the reader. Drink with the Devil comes from the 1975-1995
high-water mark of Higgins’ career. Before the glib comic book
laziness took over, Higgins was the finest thriller writer working in
the UK.

The “devil” of the title is Sean Dillon, a former cadre of the
Provisional IRA. This novel bridges the great divide in his
professional life: the early sections of the novel are set in 1985
when he worked as an agent and troubleshooter for PIRA head Jack
Barry, and then the action skips ahead to 1995, when Dillon is living
the good life in London as an agent and troubleshooter for Brigadier
Charles Ferguson’s secret security service, the “Prime Minister’s
private army.”

The subject of Drink with the Devil is the “patriot game” between
Ulster loyalist Michael Ryan and Barry over a truck full of what
Higgins calls “gold bullion” Each side wants the stolen loot to
continue the civil war, having no faith in the U.S.-brokered “peace”
between Sinn Fein and Downing Street.

Drink with the Devil features the usual scenes from previous Higgins
novels: scuba diving, travel in private planes and boats, the ordering
of Krug non-vintage champagne, the smoking of cigarettes, and cocking
a snook at security officials of the hidebound UK government. We also
have the well-loved scene where the current P.M. pauses from working
his way through a pile of documents to express admiration for Sean
Dillon.

It is easy to kid Higgins for repetition of scenes and mannerisms as
his oeuvre progresses. But the repetition has its uses, and popular
series fiction would be lost without it. A useful monograph cries out
to be written about secret buried treasures and legacies that populate
Higgins’ novels. Another subject: the escape of prisoners whose
knowledge is needed to find said treasures and legacies. Drink with
the Devil features both a buried (sunken) treasure and a prison/
hospital escape. It would be hard to match and economy and precision
with which Higgins handles both. Indeed, the underwater climax that
would take a chapter out of the life of a Tom Clancy novel is thrown-
off by Higgins in a few paragraphs with supremely dismissive gusto.

Central to Drink with the Devil is the character Cathleen Ryan, a true
victim of the Patriot Game. Her tragedy is the tragedy of generations
of Unionists who saw the future of Ireland only in continued partition
and permanent war by occupier against occupied as London continued to
prop-up Ulster’s Quislings.

Higgins is clearly on the side of what polite journalism calls the
“peace process.” This “peace process” is, from London’s side, a way
to prolong occupation. Sinn Fein views it as one more negotiation on
the way to a united Ireland. Higgins clearly backs the London side of
the argument politically, while letting a little Sinn Fein politics
breathe for purposes of ambience.

One of the man pleasures to be found in a Jack Higgins novel is the
return of characters from previous works. While all his novels since
the early 1990s center around Sean Dillon’s work for the greater
maintenance of the British Empire, a few also pay homage to the ur-
Dillon: Liam Devlin. Drink with the Devil features a few middle
chapters of Devlin’s kibitzing on the hunt for Michael and Cathleen
Ryan as that pair and their allies make plans to retrieve the gold
bullion. Liam Devlin made his first appearance in The Eagle Has
Landed (1975), one of the great bestsellers of the 1970s and the novel
that made Jack Higgins’ reputation. Always a pleasure.

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A Jack Higgins novel can usually be read faster than the audio book
version takes to play. But a Higgins audio book is usually the
perfect length for one week’s worth of workday commute.

The audio version of Drink with the Devil, however, is pretty hard
going, no matter what one’s destination. The fault, alas, lies in the
performance by TV actor Patrick Macnee. He cannot do an Irish or a
U.S. accent, and Drink with the Devil features plenty of both. Macnee
has also made the unfortunate aesthetic choice of having his Italian-
American gangsters “talk-a like-a these-a.”

Forget the Dove audio version and read the novel: we can all do the
voices better ourselves anyway, and in half the time.

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