杰克·希金斯

杰克·希金斯（英语：Jack Higgins，1929年7月27日—2022年4月9日），笔名，本名Harry Patterson，英国当代著名大众文学小说家，擅长写惊悚小说，广受市场阅众欢迎；1975年著作并改编成同名电影《猛鹰突击兵团》（The Eagle Has Landed）是成名作。

出身

幼时父母离异，随母亲搬家到北爱尔兰首府贝尔法斯特，社会动荡不安是他中学时生活写照。

里兹完成高中课业，成绩平常。

成年后加入英国陆军，在第二次世界大战后任职于英国皇家兵团，派至德国服兵役两年。

服完兵役后，返回英国在伦敦大学社会学系学生。

毕业后当教师，1959年起课后闲暇之余写小说并发表出版；直到《猛鹰突击兵团》倍受英国强悍民族性欢迎；从此放弃教职，专注写小说。

平均以一年写1～2本速度创作小说。

Henry Patterson (27 July 1929 – 9 April 2022), commonly known by his pen name Jack Higgins, was a British author. He was a best-selling author of popular thrillers and espionage novels. His novel The Eagle Has Landed (1975) sold more than 50 million copies and was adapted into a successful 1976 movie of the same title.

Some of his other notable books are A Prayer for the Dying (1973), The Eagle Has Flown (1991), Thunder Point (1993), Angel of Death (1995), Flight of Eagles (1998), and Day of Reckoning (2000). His 85 novels in total have sold more than 250 million copies and have been translated into 55 languages.

Early life

Jack Higgins was born Henry Patterson on 27 July 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne to an English father and a Northern Irish mother. When his father abandoned them soon afterward, his mother returned with him to her home town of Belfast, Northern Ireland, to live with her mother and her grandfather on the Shankill Road. Raised amid the religious and political violence of Belfast, Patterson learned to read at the age of three, when he was tasked with reading The Christian Herald to his bed-ridden grandfather. At night, he would crouch beneath a window and read by the light of street lamps.

I read Oliver Twist when I was six. Not because it was a classic, but because it was a book that was available. I probably didn't understand everything in it—for years I used to pronounce the word rogue as rogger—but I didn't care. I just loved reading.

When his mother remarried, the family relocated to Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, where Patterson won a scholarship to attend Roundhay Grammar School for Boys. He proved to be an indifferent student and left school with few formal qualifications. In 1947 he began two years of national service, at first with the East Yorkshire Regiment, and later as a non-commissioned officer of the Royal Horse Guards Regiment of the Household Cavalry doing security work on the East German border.

After leaving the army, he returned to education at Beckett Park teacher training college in Leeds and studied for a BSc sociology degree as a London School of Economics external student, taking his finals in Bradford in 1961. By day, he was working as a driver and labourer at night. He chose the university for its "history of nonconformism". He received his third-class degree after three years of study. After getting a teaching qualification, he started teaching at Allerton Grange Comprehensive School. He accepted a job lecturing in social psychology and criminology. He taught liberal studies at Leeds Polytechnic and education at James Graham College, which became part of Leeds Polytechnic in 1976.

Career

In 1959, Higgins began writing novels. One of his aliases was James Graham. The growing success of his early work allowed him to take time off from his teaching, which he quit eventually to become a full-time novelist.

Patterson's early novels, using his own name (as "Harry Patterson") as well as the pseudonyms James Graham, Martin Fallon, and Hugh Marlowe, are thrillers that typically feature hardened, cynical heroes, ruthless villains, and dangerous locales. Patterson published thirty-five such novels (sometimes three or four a year) between 1959 and 1974, learning his craft. East Of Desolation (1968), A Game For Heroes (1970) and The Savage Day (1972) are notable among his early work for their vividly described settings (Greenland, the Channel Islands, and Belfast, respectively) and offbeat plots.