Hemlock is a retired assassin who now passes his days as an art collector. Enticed out of retirement by the opportunity to avenge the death of an old friend, Hemlock finds himself on a climbing expedition up the Swiss Alps, his only certainty that one of the team (apart from himself obviously) is a killer. The Eiger Sanction is an enjoyable enough action thriller, slightly dated and occasionally becalmed, but the mountaineering itself makes up for many of the lapses.