"Spider Shepherd squatted on his heels outside his tent, drinking his first brew of the day from a battered mug as he watched the wind stirring dust devils from the dirt floor of the compound."
When an inexperienced officer sends out innocent paratroopers to be betrayed by a surrendered Taliban sniper, Spider Shepherd is the man chosen to clean up the mess.
With his old friends Jock and Geordie to help, along with SAS hopeful Lex, can they take their revenge? Or are they just putting themselves in the Kill Zone?
Stephen Leather was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. For much of 2011 his self-published eBooks - including The Bestseller, The Basement, Once Bitten and Dreamer's Cat - dominated the UK eBook bestseller lists and sold more than half a million copies. The Basement topped the Kindle charts in the UK and the US, and in total he has sold more than two million eBooks. His bestselling book The Chinaman was filmed as The Foreigner, starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan and grossing more than $100 million.
Another short story featuring Spider Shepherd's exploits while he was serving with the SAS. Although this was only a short read so much seems to have been packed into the pages. In Hard Landing there is mention of a bullet wound scar, but no information about how it happened. This short story cleared up that mystery for me. These short story are ideal if you want a quick read, but they don't really give any insight to the characters themselves.
This was an action based read and quite engaging. It was fast-paced and took me along for a ride. I like military action stories and felt it was well told, although there was some dialogue I felt was for the benefit of the reader rather than the characters where one SAS operative explains to another how some weaponry or tool was used. Aside from that, a quick and tasty read.
Entertaining and well written, this passes the time nicely and will certainly please his legion of fans, my only negative is that there is very little characterisation to Spyder (which would be nice as this deals with his earlier SAS career and it would be nice to know what sort of character he was back then). I prefer the full length Spyder novels but this is certainly an easy enjoyable read.
A short featuring one of my favorite action characters: Spider Shepherd. In other reviews I have called him "The British Chuck Norris". Tough as nails......