Product Description

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. It goes with the turf when you’re an undercover cop.

Now working for the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Shepherd is pitting his wits against the toughest criminals in the country. But when the man who once saved his life is kidnapped in the badlands of Iraq, thrown into a basement and threatened with execution, Shepherd has to decide whether his loyalties lie with his country, his career, or his friend.

Shepherd and his former SAS colleagues realise that the hostage has been abandoned by the Government and that officially nothing is being done to rescue him. And with the execution deadline only days away, Shepherd knows that the only way to stop his friend being murdered is to put himself in the firing line in the most dangerous city in the world – Baghdad.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10578 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 544 pages

Review
"* 'There's a new breed of British crime writer giving the genre a much-needed shake-up - and Stephen Leather is at the forefront... the sheer impetus of his storytelling is damned hard to resist.' - Daily Express on COLD KILL * 'This is an aggressively topical novel but a genuinely thrilling one, too.' - Daily Telegraph on COLD KILL"

Review

'This is an aggressively topical novel but a genuinely thrilling one, too.'

(Daily Telegraph on COLD KILL )

'A grand finale that'll have readers on edge'

(Literary Review on COLD KILL )

'Leather can dispense high-adrenaline plotting but never at the expense of remembering that his characters are humans rather than Action Man dolls . . . It's Shepherd's pungently drawn personality that makes him such a memorable hero'

(Sunday Express on SOFT TARGET )

'Reading Stephen Leather at leisure is always a pleasure. The pacing of SOFT TARGET is superb . . .' **** (Ireland on Sunday )

'As tough as British thrillers get . . . gripping' (Irish Independent on HARD LANDING )

'A riveting read' (Sunday Life, Belfast on SOFT TARGET )

'Exciting stuff with plenty of heart-palpitating action gingered up by mystery and intrigue . . . Leather is an intelligent thriller writer' (Daily Mail on THE TUNNEL RATS )

'As high-tech and as world-class as the thriller genre gets' (Express on Sunday on THE BOMBMAKER )

'There's a new breed of British crime writer giving the genre a much-needed shake-up - and Stephen Leather is at the forefront . . . the sheer impetus of his storytelling is damned hard to resist.'

(Daily Express on COLD KILL )

'A brilliant read that stands out of the morass of so-so military thrillers around nowadays.'

 

(News of the World )

'There's a new breed of British crime writer giving the genre a much-needed shake-up - and Stephen Leather is at the forefront . . . the sheer impetus of his storytelling is damned hard to resist.'

(Daily Express on COLD KILL )

'From page one I knew I was in good hands; Stephen creates the world of the story and takes the reader through it with total ease and command. Some authors play at sounding authentic with this kind of material. This book is totally convincing.' 

 

(Meg Gardiner )

YORKSHIRE POST on HOT BLOOD
'It will provide everything that lovers of contemporary action
fiction could ask for.'

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Customer Reviews

Better then McNab
The cover had a sticker on saying 'better then McNab or your money back', and the publishers get to keep their money because this is very good.
Featuring his character Spider Shepherd, the author takes him away from his usual line of work to help rescue an old friend from a hostage situation in Iraq.

This is the author's best work in a long time and plays very much in the Andy McNab space. A strong story with a range of interesting characters and it avoids most of the traditional traps these stories fall into, there is no shadowy traitor, the CIA and MI5 are not the bad guys etc etc. That is not to say there is not a considerable edge to this because there is, it is tight and well paced and a number of storylines are skilfully weaved into one.

Great stuff, this is a top notch thriller.

Spider takes point in Baghdad
In HOT BLOOD, Stephen Leather's fourth book in the Dan "Spider" Shepherd series, Spider, an Ex-SAS trooper now a Detective Constable with a ultra hush-hush undercover unit within London's Metropolitan Police tasked with missions otherwise impossible,leaves the relative safety of the UK on an unauthorized leave of absence from his day job to take the point position on a mission into Baghdad's most anti-Western sector.

Back in his Army days when Shepherd was chasing the Taliban in Afghanistan, Dan's life was saved by fellow trooper Geordie Mitchell. Now, while working for a private security company in the Iraqi capital, Mitchell is kidnapped by Islamic insurgents. In a video broadcast to the world, Mitchell's captors display their hostage and threaten his execution in two weeks if their demands aren't met. With virtually no leads as to Geordie's exact whereabouts or the identity of his abductors, Spider and three other former Sassmen, led by their old boss SAS Major Allan Gannon, must extricate Mitchell from his dodgy predicament before his throat is literally put to the knife.

It's only been in the third and fourth installments of the series, i.e. this volume and COLD KILL, that the Spider character has matured in the sense that he's being pitted against the Islamic jihadists that are causing so much grief across international borders in the name of Allah rather than the self-serving criminals of his home country out for just money. With this wider world view, Shepherd is made more interesting and the plots as a whole more relevant to a wider readership. It also means that Spider might get out more in the wake of his wife's death three years previous and perhaps, as here, even get lucky. I hope the author maintains this direction in future books.

For the reader, a consequence of the plot, likely intended by Leather, is a mental debate as to the methods by which the West should fight the jihadists that would see us destroyed. Does one "play by the rules" as Spider's conscience urges, or do whatever's necessary, no matter how cold blooded and brutal, as Yank CIA officer Yokely is more than happy to demonstrate during his "information retrieval" interrogations? Because, as Yokely explains the futility of American and British forces in Iraq:

"Maximum terror, minimum risk. It's a hell of a lot easier to recruit a guy to plant IEDs than it is to recruit a suicide-bomber. I tell you, they can fight like this for ever. It doesn't matter how many troops we send, how much equipment we give them, we can't win. Because the enemy is untargetable. Overwhelming firepower is all well and good, but in Iraq we've got nothing to shoot at ... Imagine the havoc devices like that would wreak on our freeways. Or in New York City. Or London."

My sentiments exactly.

The only minor criticism I have with HOT BLOOD is the home-grown, British terrorist plot that Dan and his police unit are infiltrating when old SAS loyalties summon him away to rescue Geordie. In his absence, the investigation lapses and is eventually given somewhat short-shrift by Leather, who presumably thought there was no need to further pad the storyline with ancillary action. Perhaps it might have been better had he not introduced that subplot at all, but left it to develop into the primary plot of a later book. But who am I to nit pick? If first-rate thrillers were easy to write, everybody would be doing it, including me perhaps.

I was especially delighted with the red-headed, freckled, South African mercenary character that the author introduces at the bottom of page 269 of the Hodder and Stoughton paperback edition. Hey, Stephen, perhaps you could build a whole new series around him, you think? A new action hero replete with Babes and hi-tech gadgets for the 21st century. Think of the movie deals!

Exciting (as usual)
The 4th Dan Sheppard mystery and once again, he doesn't fail to disappoint. Exotic locations and plenty of characters and sub-plots to keep our brain in gear, this is classic "Leather" and it should take no more than 3 days to complete the read. The problem with Leather's books are they're read too fast and am left wanting for the next one. Perhaps 2 books a year might be in order (joke!).