Tuesday 28 April 2015

#WW2Fiction The Eagle Has Landed


The Eagle Has Landed - one of the best books I have ever read. It is about an assassination  plot masterminded by Heinrich Himmler. The year the story is set in is 1944, the target - Winston Churchill.

Jack Higgins is one of the great adventure writers, he ranks alongside Wilbur Smith and Alastair Maclean. He has an uncanny ability to create characters which come to life, one of my favourite in this book is a character called Liam Devlin. Devlin appears in many of Higgins' books. He is an ex IRA hitman who studied at Dublin University. Devlin has a wry sense of humour and can kill when ordered without a qualm. Kurt Steiner is the German paratroop officer who leads his men on the mission. He is saved from death in a penal unit, as were his men by agreeing to take part in the mission. Steiner is a warrior with a heart, who had previously been in trouble for attempting to save a Jewish girl from being shot in Warsaw. The Germans train for their mission at  a secret base, wear British uniforms and are dropped from a captured Dakota. They are helped by Devlin and an Afrikaans lady called Joanna Grey who has lived in Britain for years. Do they succeed in killing Churchill? You had better read it to find out or watch the film...