YMMV / Jack Higgins

• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • It can be tempting to ignore Eye of the Storm, minus one or two events that are frequently mentioned in later books, as it paints Sean Dillon (the author's most popular hero) in a pretty nasty light before Characterization Marches On. It also has a Happy Ending Over Ride to a previous novel, Touch the Devil.
  • Without Mercy isn't a universally accepted installment in the Sean Dillon series due to the very poorly handled Dropped a Bridge on Him fate of main character Hannah Bernstein. For some fans, it's also where Seasonal Rot sets in, with one Amazon reviewer saying "Dillon has become less Irish, Ferguson less commanding, Billy and Harry Salter have become caricatures, the IRA has become populated with inept senior citizens, and the Russians are foiled by the most transparent sleight of hand maneuver. Gone are worthy adversaries like the Rashids or Grace Browning."
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Higgins' novels tend to be more appreciated in the USA, where he's usually ranked alongside the likes of John le Carré and Len Deighton, than they are in the UK.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A lot of Realpolitik decisions the heroes make can feel harsher following subsequent world events.
  • On Dangerous Ground features Sean Dillon and company seeking to destroy a perfectly legal and un-coerced treaty (signed by Mao Tse-Tung and Lord Mountbatten during World War II) which would keep China from reclaiming Hong Kong for another century. China's increased repression of civil rights in Hong Kong in the decades since then make their blasé attitude toward the whole affair hard to stomach.
  • In one book, the main characters save Vladimir Putin (who has already been a Hate Sink antagonist in several books) from an assassin just because they feel that his death is likely to destabilize world affairs. This can be a lot harder to swallow following Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• He's Just Hiding: Not everyone is 100% sure that Kate Rashid, a complicated villain who didn't live up to her full potential, couldn't have escaped her drowning in Edge of Danger.
• Jerkass Woobie: Many villains have Freudian Excuses and lose many of their remaining loved ones even as their goals remain hard to agree with.
  • Mary Ryan in Drink with the Devil. She was raped as a child, her parents and sister were killed during The Troubles, and she accidentally kills her uncle and Parental Substitute while trying to break him out of jail.
  • Max Roucad in The President's Daughter is The Mole for an extremist organization (telling them about the existence of the U.S. President’s illegitimate daughter), but it's hard to deny that his life sucks. His family died in a concentration camp, where he was forced to submit to sexual abuse to keep the guards from killing him as well. His wife died after World War II and his lover dies during the story. Then, he's Driven to Suicide upon learning that his contacts aren't using the information he gave them to blackmail the President, but instead kidnapped his daughter (a family friend of Rocaud's) and are threatening to kill her unless the President uses military force against Israel's neighbors.
  • Recurring villain Grace Rashid has a Corrupt the Cutie (although cutie may be a strong word) arc as she loses her mother and all three of her brothers in a short period of time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In Edge of Danger, Senator Quinn gets an engaging backstory and is seemingly set up to have a Papa Wolf Roaring Rampage of Revenge, before being abruptly sidelined for the rest of the book in a way that makes his previous accomplishments and the losses he's endured feel completely pointless. He doesn't even get to rectify this by showing up in later books.