Eagle Has Landed (Paperback)

But even though Germany has suffered great defeats in North Africa and the vast territories of the Soviet Union, Hitler still has hopes of winning the war. Desperately seeking a significant propaganda victory and inspired by the rescue of fellow dictator Benito Mussolini by a team of German special forces, the Fuhrer (egged on by SS chief Heinrich Himmler) orders the head of Military Intelligence (Abwehr) to carry out an even more daring special forces mission: to capture British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bring him to the Reich.

At first, it is an offhand remark, "a joke," as Abwehr Col. Max Radl notes, "...something the Fuhrer threw out in an angry mood on a Wednesday, to be forgotten by Friday." Soon, though, as Himmler orders a feasibility study and Radl ponders it, what seems like a fantastic notion soon starts looking as something that can, with the right men and conditions, be done.

This dangerous mission is assigned to Lt. Col. Kurt Steiner, the son of a German general and his American wife, and a small group of paratroopers. Their mission: to drop into East Anglia near the town of Studley Constable, where Abwehr agent Joanna Grey and IRA operative Liam Devlin are waiting to assist in the capture of Britain's wartime leader, and snatch Churchill from the estate where he is staying while on an inspection tour.

And so, in the early morning hours of November 6, 1943, as soon as Steiner's small band of paratroopers floats down onto English soil, Heinrich Himmler receives the coded message he has been waiting for with great anticipation: "The Eagle has landed."

Jack Higgins' bestselling novel was published almost 30 years ago, but its taut storyline and inventive blend of fact and fiction place this World War II thriller in the ranks of the best books of the genre. His descriptions of historical characters -- such as Adolf Hitler -- and his references to actual historical events give the whole scenario verisimilitude. All the characters -- hero, anti-hero, and even villains -- are well-developed and believable. Higgins also has the creative chutzpah of injecting a first-person narrator named Jack Higgins, making the book sound like a reporter's expose of a German mission so daring that it had to be covered up by the Allies.

The novel launched Higgins' career into almost instant fame, and in turn inspired a 1977 film version starring Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, and Joanna Miles. It was followed in the mid-1980s by a sequel, The Eagle Has Flown.

This book was an immense chore for me to get through. If I REALLY enjoy a book, I devour it in a matter of a few days; all other leisure activity comes to a halt until the book is finished. If a book is enjoyable enough to keep me coming back for more each evening for short doses, it will usually take me a week or two: a bit longer but I enjoy it none-the-less. "The Eagle Has Landed" took me about two months to finish; my novel reading was replaced with magazines simply because I couldn't get into this book and I refuse to start another until I finish the one I am currently working on reading.

The main problem with this book is, in my opinion, the characters. I simply did not care if any of them lived or died and felt none of them significantly contributed to the story. There was no clearly defined protagonist or antagonist but characters that just went through their actions it seemed as if on a whim. Perhaps that was Higgins' intent; hoping to make the characters more complex but in the end it leads to shallow characters who are in multiple cases presented to the reader in a dossier-like manner. I can think of three characters (Steiner, Devlin, and the woman assisting Devlin...Brown, perhaps) whose whole history is provided in a matter of a few paragraphs. The reader is forced in a matter of a few pages to decide whether or not this character matters; no real situations are presented during initial character development to convince the reader why they should side with one character or another. Another bothersome point involves the actions and emotions of some of the characters being completely unbelievable. One particular example is the relationship between Liam Devlin and Molly Prior. Somehow this lustful exchange between two characters develops into a relationship that influences the closing action dramatically. The exchanges between these two "lovers" are trite and boring. The relationship is flat and pointless as far as plot development is concerned and was a weak attempt to spice up the action with a couple love scenes. And lastly, the fact that characters are introduced into the story on an as-needed basis is frustrating. The two investigators from London midway through and many of the town's people at the end of the story seem to only be there to keep the story from falling on its face. Why didn't these two investigators play a larger role in the story? They should have been edited from the book all together because they show up twice with only very minor roles that could have been filled in other means. And how is the reader supposed to be sympathetic to the townspeople being held hostage/affected by the invaders when we meet them only as necessary. For a town of only 50 people where at most ten of them play a major role, the reader would have been helped significantly with more character development here as well. I could go on and on about how poorly I thought the characters were crafted but I feel these few examples should give some indication of the poor character development.

If the reader cannot relate to or does not care for any of the characters, the plot is pretty much moot. While in theory this plot is promising, it is executed poorly. A story can have significant plot build-up and not be boring but this one was just one uninteresting chapter after another. The last three or four chapters over which most all of the action occurs are fairly tolerable but the battle scene is so weakly described that it is hard to follow and uninteresting as well. I never really had a good picture of what was going on in my head. The best part of this plot was the attempt to tie in a first person perspective to the story: an interesting idea that barely works.

In the end, there's not much I can think of to make me recommend this book. I guess if you HAVE to read all books in this genre, it would be okay but there are much better WWII spy/espionage thrillers out there. Considering that many reviewers call this Higgins' best book, I'm very hesitant to pick up another one of his that I bought.