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EAST OF DESOLATION
by Jack Higgins
HarperCollins, October 2006
336 pages
6.99 GBP
ISBN: 0007223706


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Joe Martin flies a seaplane for a living. His base of operations is Frederiksborg, a small town on the coast of Greenland about 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. From Frederiksborg, Joe flies supplies to construction and mining companies and private individuals up and down the coast.

One of the people he supplies is Jack Desforge, an American film actor and producer presently cruising the fjords around Frederiksborg on his yacht, Stella. Joe flies supplies to Jack on a weekly basis, but he makes an unexpected trip to the yacht when an American actress shows up in town, a young woman intent on finding Jack Desforge.

Ilana Eytan earned her way into the film world via Jack Desforge. It appears that her sudden appearance in Greenland is linked to the still unfilled female lead in a movie Jack intends to make. Joe senses there’s more to the visit than that, though, perhaps something more romantic than landing a job.

His attention soon moves on to another job when Hans Vogel, an insurance investigator with a British firm, comes to him with a strange story. A plane disappeared over Greenland a year before, a plane insured by Vogel’s company. Members of an Oxford University expedition recently discovered the remains of the plane while crossing the Greenland icecap. Two bodies were found and buried near the plane, but the identities of the two men don’t match the names on the plane’s flight plan.

Vogel, his partner Ralph Stratton, and Sarah Kelso, the wife of the pilot listed on the flight plan, have come to Greenland to find the plane and positively identify the bodies. Without this identification, the insurance company refuses to pay on the loss.

At first Joe refuses the job. He gives Vogel the name of another pilot who may be willing to land on the icecap. When that pilot suddenly dies, Joe changes his mind and agrees to fly the three people north. Joe has his own reasons for taking the job, reasons tied to his past and far different from Vogel’s.

But unexpected trouble lies right around the corner when a bag of hijacked jewels shows up in Frederiksborg, a shipload of dangerous commercial sailors arrives in town, and Jack Desforge begins acting like one of the characters he played in his many adventure films. Complicating it all is Joe’s growing attraction for Ilana Eytan. Matters come to a head in a heart-racing chase across the fjords of Greenland and the nearby Danish countryside.

First published in the UK in 1968, EAST OF DESOLATION preceded THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, the book that brought Higgins international fame as a best-selling author of suspense novels. The unusual setting in this book coupled with powerfully drawn characters, a complicated plot, and a nicely done twist ending guarantee that this re-publication will be well-received by readers familiar with Higgins’ other work. Based on the timeless theme of greed and desperation, it’s a darned good adventure story that stands up as well today as when it was first released.

Reviewed by Mary V. Welk, December 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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