Guns of Heaven

The Guns of Heaven by Pete Hamill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reporter Sam Briscoe meets up with an IRA leader in Northern Ireland and agrees to bring a letter back to the States. Unfortunately, some don't want that letter delivered and follow Briscoe back to New York to prevent the delivery...

Interesting tidbit: Pete Hamil was one of the men that disarmed Sirhan Sirhan after he shot RFK. I have to think that might be part of why this was selected to be part of the Hard Case Crime library. As far as Hard Case Crime books go, this one is on the likeable side of average. Once the story takes off, there's a good amount of suspense. Hamill throws twist after twist at you. Briscoe's a fairly typical detective story hero; smart mouth, takes a beating, and never gives up. The IRA angle sets it apart from a lot of stories written at the same time. It feels like a movie Mel Gibson would have done in the early 90's or one that Liam Neeson would do today, now that he's getting the Mel Gibson action roles now that Mel's off his rocker.

So why only a 3? It took too long to get moving. While I'm interested in the IRA and the conflict in Northern Ireland, I'm not so interested that I need a metric shit ton of IRA history while I'm reading a detective story. Other than that, it's not too bad. I wouldn't say it's an essential Hard Case by any means.

View all my reviews