Drink with the Devil

Jack Higgins is the Ebola virus of thriller writers: his prose is so contagious that it makes you read along feverishly until the bitter end. Since there's no known cure, you might as well lie back and enjoy his latest attack, a compulsively readable story about an alliance between the New York Mafia and Irish Loyalists to recover 50 million pounds worth of stolen gold bullion from the bottom of the Irish Sea. It pits Sean Dillon, one of Higgins's trademark superheroes, against a variety of villains -- none more frightening than a young woman driven mad by hatred.