World War II Database

The time for this novel was 1945, not long before the end of the European War. The place was an island in the Channel Islands as fictional as the story itself. The main character of Jack Higgins' A Game for Heroes, Owen Morgan, was a British special agent who returned to the island where he grew up to thwart the possible continuation of German resistance beyond the general German surrender that was inevitable. The plot was fairly simple and straight forward without many twist and turns, with the story ending in a rather anti-climatic manner, and I felt that this book unfortunately lacked the kind of drama found in other Higgins works. Nevertheless, the simple story did also have its charm, as it allowed the author to dive deep into the mind and decision-making process of the main character.

I had reviewed this title in its audio book form. While the reader did a good job with the pacing and applying a different voice to the various characters (including the first-person style narration for the main character, Morgan), I thought there were some issues with the villain, Colonel Radl; the accent used for Radl reminded me more like a British officer than a German one, and Radl's speech seemed to be always done with screams, thus creating a bit of a volume control problem for me, who enjoyed this audio book with a set headphones.

A Game for Heroes was certainly not Higgins' best work, especially since books like The Eagle Has Landed set a high bar for the rest of his works. While my opinion on this war time fiction remained neutral, thus not recommending for or against it, those who already identify themselves as Higgins fans might wish to check it out and form their own opinions.