The Jack Higgins character Paul Chavasse appears in several novels and is essentially a James Bond-style action hero. In this one, he has various cut-throat adventures in eastern Italy and the swamplands of Albania while trying to help a beautiful agent in her quest to recover a priceless religious artefact, the Black Madonna.The entire book is best summed up as fast-moving trash. Barely a word of it is believable or rooted in reality, but it's never so bad that you feel the urge to give up and read no further. The dialogue is alternately cliched and just plain wooden, and some of the action sequences end up provoking unintentional amusement. The Albanian locale is, at least, unusual and interesting, and Higgins manages a handful of memorable scenes in his story. It's also mercifully brief nonsense, and therefore won't take too much of your time to finish! I can't honestly recommend this book to anyone, but I wouldn't say it's fair to go around warning people to steer clear either. It is what it is - simple-minded action fodder which you can read without needing to tax your brain too severely!
