Product Description

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. Working for an elite undercover squad he has lied, cheated and conned in order to bring Britain’s most wanted criminals to justice.

But when a powerful drugs baron starts to kill off witnesses to his crimes, Shepherd is given his most dangerous assignment yet. He has to go undercover in a top security prison, a world where one wrong move will mean certain death.

As Shepherd gambles everything to move in on his quarry, he soon realises that the man he is hunting is even more dangerous than the police realise. And that he is capable of striking outside the prison walls and hitting Shepherd where it hurts most.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13384 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

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

Review

'A tightly-plotted, heart-racing read, packed with just the right balance of suspense, menace and action'

(Daily Mail )

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

'Unputdownable'

(South China Morning Post )

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

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

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

'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 )

'A whirlwind of action, suspense and vivid excitement' (Irish Times on THE BIRTHDAY GIRL )

'Stephen Leather's novel manages to put a contemporary spin on a timeless tale of revenge and retribution . . . Leather's experience as a journalist brings a sturdy, gritty element to a tale of horror . . . which makes THE EYEWITNESS a compelling read' (Evening Herald, Dublin )

'Stephen Leather should be nestling in your bookshelves alongside Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins' (Daily Mail )

Daily Mail
'Stephen Leather should be nestling in your bookshelves alongside Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins'

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Customer Reviews

Riveting
This is typical Stephen Leather. Fast, well written, absorbing plot and difficult to put down! Even my wife, who is not a great reader couldn't resist this one! Thoroughly recommended as are all his other novels.

Standard Prison story with a cracking end
Leather has written some amazing books and this for anyone else would be a good book but not quite as amazing as his early ones. The story starts off with Dan Shepherd being arrested and put in prison to get information on a really nasty drug runner who has killed off most of anyone who can finger him. The scenes are pretty graphic and the action as far as it can get in a prison is pretty hard and fast. The ending makes a huge extra point to the book.

Not bad.

New literary Tough Guy hits the ground running
HARD LANDING was the first in the Stephen Leather's series of thrillers starring Dan "Spider" Shepherd, an ex-SAS trooper now assigned to an elite Metropolitan police unit tabbed for deep undercover operations when the usual enforcement methods can't nab the bad guys. Dan's nickname came to be while on an SAS survival training mission and he won a bet on who could eat the most disgusting thing. One normally doesn't see "tarantula" on the menu even in the greasiest curry house.

HARD LANDING was followed by SOFT TARGET and COLD KILL, all three of which I've unintentionally read in reverse order. I'd recommend reading the first book first since, if nothing else, the series is a character development exercise for the protagonist.

Here, Spider is tossed into one of Her Majesty's maximum security prisons after establishing his cover as an armed desperado on an airport warehouse hold-up gone bad. Dan's mission is to nail big-time drug trafficker Gerald Carpenter, currently in the same lock-up awaiting trial. Carpenter is somehow communicating with the outside and masterminding the quashing of evidence and killing of witnesses that would otherwise convict him. Fearing Gerald will ultimately go free, Shepherd's job is to identify the leak and thus ensure Carpenter's conviction.

Spider's job prevents him from having a normal home life with his wife Sue and son Liam, a fact that causes the inevitable friction with the former and neglect of the latter and which is exacerbated by a tragedy that occurs while Dan is behind bars. I previously mentioned in my review of SOFT TARGET (dated 11/4/06 and entitled "A whopping cell phone bill, no doubt") that the author perhaps dwelled too much on Spider's spotty relationship with his son, which caused me to knock off a star from that otherwise splendid tale. With Shepherd, I'm looking for hard-boiled action not agonized soul-searching. (My other favorite fictional Tough Guy, Lee Child's Jack Reacher, never ever moons about engaging in self-castigating guilt trips.) I gave COLD KILL five stars (dated 6/29 06 and entitled "How hardball do we play it?") because it maximized the action and minimized the hand-wringing, and I'm giving HARD LANDING a full allocation of points for the same reason.

Until commencing with the Dan Shepherd series, Leather had pretty much eschewed an ongoing hero beyond a couple of books. With Spider, Stephen has struck gold, and I'm eagerly awaiting the fourth installment, HOT BLOOD.