Jack Higgins’s thriller Thunder Point was published in 1993 and is a credible page-turner.
It concerns serious incriminating documents from 1945 locked away in a metal Nazi briefcase located in a sunken U-boat in the Caribbean.
The U-boat is discovered by accident in 1992 but when the diver learns of the contents inaccessibly locked in a watertight compartment he consults friends in London. This escalates, ultimately involving Brigadier Ferguson who runs a clandestine unit only answerable to the PM. Ferguson inveigles Sean Dillon, Irish assassin and hard man to penetrate the submarine and recover the briefcase.
Other people learn of this and want the contents either to be destroyed or for potential leverage in a political power-game.
It’s colourful, well-researched and the reader becomes invested in the characters.
A first-rate fast-paced Higgins thriller.
Editorial comment:
In most cases my comments are not criticisms but hints about writing.
There are a couple of contrived episodes involving imprisonment in Yugoslavia and a nun outside Paris, the latter of no real relevance; nothing to spoil the reading experience, however,
This
section is from Dillon’s POV:
‘...
He recognised Algaro at once... and then Santiago came out of the wheelhouse. “Who’s
the guy in the blazer and cap?” Dillon enquired.
“That’s
Max Santiago, the owner...”’
Instead of ‘Santiago came out...’ it should have read ‘a man in a blazer and cap came out’. (p179)
Several characters sit or lie and ‘think about things’...
Dillon’s
favourite handgun – Walther PPK with a Carswell silencer...
Fact:
The
skeletal remains of Martin Bormann were discovered in the 1960s and identified
in the 1970s, though not conclusively until 1998 following genetic testing.
