Jack Higgins / Rough Justice
This is Higgins's fifteenth novel featuring Sean Dillon, although in this one Dillon isn't the main focus. Whilst checking up on the volatile situation in Kosovo the US President's right-hand man Blake Johnson meets Major Harry Miller, a member of the British Cabinet. Miller is there doing his own checks for the British Prime Minister. Miller's background in Intelligence operations in Ireland means that he is not afraid to get his hands dirty. When both men get involved with a group of Russian soldiers about to commit an atrocity, Miller puts an end to the scuffle with a bullet in the forehead of the ring-leader.
But this action has dire consequences not only for Miller and Johnson but their associates too, including Britain's Sean Dillon, and all the way to the top of the British, Russian and United States governments. The problem is a mysterious "fixer" whose links to Osama Bin Laden make him a threat of international proportions, and the possibility that the Russians are using terrorists for both criminal and national interests.
Jumping from American and England to Ireland and the Middle East, death begets death, and revenge leads only to revenge, and before the chain reaction of events is over, many will be dead!
Higgins delivers another fast paced action thriller, with a typical high body count and associated murder and mayhem. Some parts of the story may be somewhat unbelievable, but the action will keep you turning pages to find what comes next.
Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough / Deluge
In book three of "The Twins of Petaybee" series, the Selkie twins Ronan and Murel leave Petaybee on a mission to help rescue their friend Marmion, who has been falsely arrested on the orders of a corrupt Colonel. However, the Colonel has more power in the Company than they realise and they end up being imprisoned themselves and taken to the Gwinnet Incarceration Colony. There they have to try to evade the clutches of their old adversary Dr. Mabu, an unscrupulous scientist who want to study their unusual shape-changing ability, and doesn't care how much pain her experiments cause them.
Meanwhile, the powerful and avaricious Company is making another attempt to take over the world of Petaybee for its resources. The Company soldiers, however, arrive to find that the settlers are not as unsuspecting as planned. The inhabitants of the village of Kilcoole have managed to escape to safety in a cave some distance from the settlement, and here the twins' parents, Yana and Sean, along with the entire planet, are planning to fight for the independence of their sentient world once and for all.
With shape-changing alien sea-otters and their city-ship, and assorted animal friends, Ronan and Murel survive a volcanic eruption and tsunami and complete their mission to find and help their friends. Loose ends are conveniently tied up in this concluding volume of the twins' trilogy which will primarily appeal to young, animal-loving SF fans.
People of the Book / Geraldine Brooks
When Hanna Heath gets a call in the middle of the night in her Sydney home about a precious medieval manuscript that has been recovered from the smouldering ruins of war-torn Sarajevo, she knows she is on the brink of the experience of a lifetime.
A renowned book conservator, she must now make her way to Bosnia to start work on restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah - a Jewish prayer book - to discover its secrets and piece together the story of its miraculous survival. As Hanna examines the book she discovers tiny clues - an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair - which help her determine the provenance of the work.
But the trip will also set in motion a series of events that threaten to rock Hanna's orderly life, including her encounter with Ozren Karamen, the young librarian who risked his life to save the book.
The Sarajevo Haggadah is a real manuscript, created in Spain in the mid 14th century it has survived numerous wars including World War II, where is was smuggled out of Sarajevo, and the Bosnian War of the early 1990s, when it was protected in a bank vault. Brooks has turned the intriguing but little known history of this precious manuscript into a thrilling story that retraces its turbulent journey, told through Hanna's discoveries as she examines the book, and through stories of how the book was first created and then lost and found over the years.
