Jack Higgins

Jack Higgins was brought up in Belfast in a family with a political background and frequently experienced the worst aspect of the troubles during his youth. He later moved to Leeds and left school with noqualifications. He had a succession of jobs, including two years as an NCO in the Royal Horse Guards, serving on the East German border during the Cold War. He was then accepted as an external student at London University, while working as a circus tent-hand, a tram-conductor and most things in between, and a degree in sociology and social psychology took him into teaching, before he became a full-time author. In 1995 Leeds Metropolitan University awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Jack Higgins was already a writer of adventure stories when he wrote The Eagle Has Landed, but his highly original war novel turned him into a international bestselling author. His novels have since sold over 250 million copies and have been translated into fifty-five languages. Many of them have been filmed: the great MGM classic, The Wrath of God, Rita Hayworth's last film, The Eagle Has Landed; and for TV: Confessional, Night of the Fox, Eye of the Storm and On Dangerous Ground. A Prayer for the Dying, starring Bob Hoskins and Mickey Rourke, was probably the most
controversial film of the decade. 

In the Hour before Midnight (1969)

The main character in the book is Stacey Wyatt. He is described as a good looking gunman in his mid 20s, who is quite intelligent and takes orders from nobody. He has a Sicilian background because his mother was Sicilian. His father died in the Korean war when Stacey was only ten years old. And his grandfather, Vito Barbaccia is a Sicilian Mafia boss. The story mostly takes place on Sicily in the late 1960s.

The book begins when Stacey is stuck in an Egyptian prison camp, which was called "the hole". It was called the hole because the prison cells were holes in the ground, it was a place of darkness and heat where you rotted in your own filth and died from the lack of air. Stacey got arrested and put in the hole because he tried to smuggle gold and got caught. The prison was owned by a cruel man called Major Husseini, who threated his prisoners very badly. He whipped them and let them hang in the burning sun for hours.

And one fine day when Stacey was going to be punished for insulting Major Husseini, something happened. Three men dressed as shepherds carrying automatic rifles on their shoulders came to the prison camp where Stacey was going to be whipped by Major Husseini him self. The three men dressed as shepherds shot Husseini and the guards cold blooded and rescued Stacey. The three men were Sean Burke, Piet Jaeger and Legrande. Sean Burke was an old friend of Staceys and Piet Jeager and Legrande were two tough merciless men recruited by Sean Burke. Sean and Stacey had met before in a café in Mozambique where Stacey played the piano back in 1962.

Stacey Wyatt was an ordinary man before he met Sean Burke, who is described as a tough Irish commando kind of a guy who knows his way with guns and has served in the British Army for 20 years before he came to Africa to form a special unit to help keep order. Sean is a hard man who never shows any feelings. Stacey admired Sean Burke and saw him as a father figure, because he had lost his own father when he was a little boy. Sean thaught Stacey everything there is to know about guns and killing. Stacey went through hard training and grew stronger and became an excellent gunman.

Now after many years apart Stacy Wyatt and Sean Burke are together again. Both have changed alot. After Stacey is rescued from the prison camp they fly to Crete where they stay at a luxurious villa by the sea, which is owned by a rich Austrian financier named Karl Hoffer. Karl Hoffer is a fat man who dresses in expensive clothes and had brough drugs and prostititon to Sicily, and run all his business with mafia money. Hoffer had payed Sean to rescue Stacey from the prison, because Stacey's Sicilian background was needed in an operation on Sicily. There was a reward, 25 thousand dollars each. The operation was to rescue Karl Hoffer's 20-year-old stepdaughter Joanna Truscott, who was kidnapped by a man called Serafino Lentini. Lentini had demanded a ransom of 25 thousand dollars, which Hoffer had paid, but Lentini still didn't let the girl go. The place where the girl is held is in the very rough mountain area on Sicily, where only the toughest men can survive.

When Stacey finds out that Sean only rescued him because of his Sicilian background, which is needed in the operation, Stacey gets mad and their friendship becomes more complicated, but Stacey will despite that help out with the operation mainly because of the 25 tousand dollars.

Later on they fly to Sicily where they stay in another huge luxurious villa also owned by the rich Karl Hoffer. Sicily is described as a place which is ruled by the Mafia, a place where everybody has a gun under their arm, a place where the sun shines and the beaches and women are beautiful and where the ordinary people are poor. At the villa Stacey meets a gorgeous woman named Rosa Salozzo who is Hoffer's girlfriend, and their relationship is quite strange because Stacey isn't sure if she is paid by Hoffer to please him or if she does it by her own will. But they become lovers later on. Stacey, Sean and the other men who are involved in the operation "save-the-girl" spends alot of time at the villa planning the operation. They eat superb food, sleep in comfortable beds, drink good vine and are served by servants. They live like kings and everything is paid by Karl Hoffer.

After they have planned the operation carefully down to every detail they take off. The operation is carried out by Stacey, Sean Burke, Piet Jaeger and Legrande. The only way to get near the rough place where the hostage, Joanna Trescott is held, is to take a plane and parachute jump down. And so they do, they wait till it gets dark and then they take off in the darkness of the Sicilian night. When they reach their destination they jump from a height of 800 feet, and when you jump from that hight it takes exactly 30 seconds to reach the ground. After they all landed safely they started walking towards the place where Joanna was supposed to be held. The ground was rough treacherous and slippery. After a few hours of hiking all except the heroic Stacey were tired and wanted to rest for awhile. So Stacey went on by him self and said he'd wait for the others at the bottom of the hill.
After Stacey got down the hill to a small stream he heard a voice, it was the voice of Joanna Trescott. She was bathing naked in the stream and her body was described as milkwhite and boyish with almost non-existent breast. Stacey didn't even bother to look away because she looked so sexless. After she dressed her self Stacey stepped out of the bushes and told her he had come to rescue her.

In this part of the book there's a radical change in the plot and things get quite complicated.
 Joanna tells Stacey that everything Karl Hoffer had told him was a lie. That she was kidnapped by Serafino Lentini and that Lentini had demanded a ransom, which Hoffer had paid but Lentini still kept Joanna - it was all a lie. The only thing which was true was that Hoffer had paid the 25 thousand dollars to Lentini, but for another reason. Lentini was supposed to ambush, rob and shoot Joanna to death by her car so it would look like an ordinary robbing. But Serafino Lentini didn't do it, because there was something he liked about Joanna, something that reminded him of his younger sister who had died in childbirth. 
And why did Hoffer want his stepdaughter dead? Because his dead wife had left everything she owned in her daughter's Joanna's trust with Hoffer as executor. And if Joanna would die before the age of 21 Hoffer would get all the money. And after three weeks she would be 21 and then she would be able to get all the money her self. She had promised to give 1 hundred tousand pounds to Serafino Lentini and his men if they would keep her alive till she turned 21. But why did Hoffer send Stacey, Sean and the others to rescue her if he knew she wasn't kidnapped? Joanna thought they had come to finish her off, and Stacey... well, he didn't know what to think when Serafino's men suddenly jumped on him and tied him down. But Joanna trusted Stacey and told them to untie him and so they did. 

After they talked for awhile and cleared some things up, Stacey decided to go back to Sean and the others and tell them the whole story about Joanna - that she wasn't kidnapped and that Karl Hoffer had planned to kill her. He walked for awhile back up the mountain and finally reached the Sean and the other men. He told them the whole story and they were all astonished. And then they all went down to Joanna, Serafino and his men to make up some kind of a plan against Hoffer. But when they got down and Stacey was just about to introduce Joanna to Sean, Sean did something terrible. He shot Joanna through the head. And after that everybody started to shoot each other. Serafino and his men and Legrande all got killed and Stacey got wounded in his right arm while he ran out in the bushes and took cover. Sean started to throw grenades all over the place and Stacey saved him self by jumping in the stream in the last second. Sean and Jaeger were the only ones alive besides Stacey, of course. Sean and Jaeger thought that Stacey also was dead. But Stacey was only wounded and was hiding in the bushes waiting for Sean and Jeager to leave.

It was at this point where Stacey became wholly Sicilian, the rage was boiling inside of him and he was filled with hate against Sean Burke. Stacey now realised that Sean Burke and Karl Hoffer had tricked him. Sean and the two other men had known all along that Hoffer would get all the money if Joanna was dead and their duty was to kill her. And Stacey thought they had succeeded until he saw that Joanna was barely alive, her face was covered with blood and she gave a low moan. No one could have been blamed for believing her to be dead, so terrible was her appearance. Stacey had a combat medical pack in one of his side pocket and he put a bandage around Joanna's bloody head and also around his own arm. Then he saw a donkey in the woods and lifted Joanna on the donkey and started to walk towards the nearest town called Bellona. Stacey was filled with rage and couldn't think of anything else than saving the girl and having his revenge on the evil Sean Burke. After many hours of rough hiking he reached Bellona where he totally collapsed. He later woke up in a house which belonged to a friend of him called Marco who knew Stacey's grandfather well. Marco also took care of Joanna who was barely alive.

The story now slowly climbs its' way up to the climax, the final battle between good and evil - the battle between Stacy Wyatt and Sean Burke. Until the bloodbath in the mountains Stacey had done everything for money, but now money meant nothing to him. All he wanted now was his personal vendetta.

After Joanna had been taken to the hospital and Stacey had recovered his strength he was taken to his grandfathers villa, where he told his grandfather the whole story. His grandfather didn't like Hoffer either. Later on there was going to be a meeting in the same villa where Stacey now was in which all the big mafia men of Sicily would take part in, including Hoffer, who didn't yet know that Joanna was alive. At the meeting Hoffer told everyone that her stepdaughter had been kidnapped some weeks ago and that she had died tradically earlier that day. Stacey was listening to the conversation from another room, without Hoffer even knowing that he also was alive. After Hoffers speech Stacey walked into the room. Hoffer got all pale, mostly because of the shock but also because of the realization that he was in deep manure. Stacey then relieved Hoffers false story to the other mafiosos. Hoffer knew he was beaten and walked out of the villa cursing and told Stacey that his lover Rosa Solazzo was in the hands of another evil Mafioso called Ciccio. Stacey got furious and wanted to kill Hoffer right there, but his grandfather stopped him and said that he couldn't kill him there, it was the Mafia law. Hoffer then drove away in his Mercedes. 

After awhile Stacey couldn't resist him self, he drove after Hoffer in a red Alfa and about ten miles out side of the Villa Stacey saw flames in the night, it was Hoffer who had driven his Mercedes in a concrete wall and had died. Stacey knew his grandfather was behind the accident, it was the Mafia justice. So now Hoffer was out of the game and there was only Sean Burke left to kill. Sean Burke and his men were staying at Hoffer's villa, where Rosa, Stacey's lover, also was held. The villa was surrounded by a high concrete wall, so Stacey had to drive through the front gates. Anger and hate was boiling inside of Stacey when he drove through the bronze gates. The villa was surrounded by many of Hoffer's stupid guards, who Stacey took care of in no time with his trusty handgun. After Stacey had taken care of all the guards he moved along into the villa where he found Rosa badly beaten. "Oh Stacey my hero! You're alive" bla bla.. rosa cried out. They hugged each other and said the usual soap opera lines. After that touching scene Stacey had one more thing to do, he had to confront the tough and evil Sean Burke. The final battle between good and evil was finally going to happen. Sean was waiting for Stacey outside in the garden. Stacey ran out in the garden and saw Sean standing there with a gun in his hand. The two men stood face to face and both with a gun in their hand. The things they said to each other was very unoriginal macho talk. "I have been waiting for this moment a long time.. bla bla.. "prepare to meet your destiny".. After the useless macho talk
they started to shoot at each other. After a short gunfight Stacey hit Sean in the head killing him instantly.

Good had won once again. Rosa ran to Stacey and hugged him and held him tightly. Then the other Mafia men came and said they would take care of the dead bodies.