Saturday, July 21, 2012

Harry Patterson aka Jack Higgins: Comes the Dark Stranger

We were on a trip for over a week and my reading time was pretty limited, but I still managed to read a few books. One of them was an early Jack Higgins title under his real name Harry Patterson, called Comes the Dark Stranger (1962). It's a fast-moving thriller about a man who got a bullet in the head in the Korean war and comes back to England to find the man who was guilty of getting the squadron leader killed. There are lots of noirish elements throughout the book, such as the protagonist's foreboding doom. There's also stuff that's a bit reminiscent of Condon's and Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. This is a fast and fluent read, but not very original or ground-breaking. Published in Finland in 1987 under the title Yön varjot (The Shadows of Night). I'm not sure what edition is in the picture, but it sure ain't the first edition.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That looks like the cover of the edition I have, but I don't know where it is.

Juri said...

There seems to be an Arrow edition from 1979.

Prashant C. Trikannad said...

Harry Patterson is one of my favourite authors and I have been reading Jack Higgins since college. I haven't read this one, though.