I'd never read any Jack Higgins and found this lying around a beach house, so picked it up and started reading; terrifically well paced with well delineated characters. ( )

A seafaring adventure in which vessels on both sides of the Second World War find a storm to be the greater enemy. Subplots include the doomed love of a German sailor for a nun and backstories for some of the characters aboard the wrecked tall ship and its rescuers. In many ways a large part of the story is a reworking of A Game For Heroes (Higgins writing as James Graham, 1970). ( )

Jack Higgins (born July 27, 1929) is the principal pseudonym of UK novelist Harry Patterson. Higgins is the author of more than sixty novels. Most have been thrillers of various types and, since his breakthrough novel The Eagle Has Landed in 1975, nearly all have been bestsellers. The Eagle Has Landed sold tens of millions of copies worldwide.

Storm Warning was the follow up novel to the highly successful 1975 bestseller The Eagle Has Landed.

Higgins takes to the sea in this wartime thriller. Matching the standard of his novels of this period. The setting is the sailing ship, 'Deutschland' and we are placed on it with the rest of the crew.

Plot introduction

The German merchant ship is attempting to return to Germany from Brazil, this is at the end of August 1944 and across the Atlantic which is full of enemy (i.e. allied) shipping and warships. With a crew of twenty-two men and five nuns as passengers, the boat makes its remarkable journey, but after being severely battered by a storm, is wrecked off the coast of the British Isles.

The conclusion may sound familiar to some as Higgins has obviously taken some ideas (especially the ones regarding the shipwreck) from an earlier novel he wrote called 'A Game For Heroes', in which German soldiers and British citizens try to rescue the crew of a ship that has foundered off the coast of the Jersey islands.

Once again, the protagonists are enemies that come together to help each other in time of need.

This is based on a true story.

Not a bad story but I did have a hard time getting into the book at first which is surprising for me because it takes place in the WWII era. If you don't know the ins and out of sailing terms be prepared to look things up if you want to understand parts of the book. ( )

Good