The Hunting

by Stephen Leather

Money can't buy everythingBut it can buy revengeCan a doctor take lives instead of saving them?British doctor Raj Patel puts his own life on the line to treat the injured in war-torn Syria. His medical skills help casualties survive against all the odds.But Raj needs to rely on a completely different set of skills when he is taken hostage in a treacherous case of mistaken identity.Billionaire big-game hunter Jon van der Sandt is driven by revenge - his family have been killed by jihadist terrorists and he wants his vengeance up close and personal. He has hired ex Special Forces hard men to snatch the ISIS killers from the desert and transport them halfway across the world to the vast wilderness of his American estate.But they grab Raj by mistake, and once the killing begins it's too late to plead mistaken identity. To survive, he'll have to become as ruthless a killer as the man who is hunting him.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Crime

Paperback

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Nick Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am very grateful to the author and publishers for an advance copy of this marvellous book.

Stephen Leather has been knocking them out of the park for over 30 years with astonishing consistency. He started off with one-off thrillers and it’s easy to forget this was his starting point as we have since been gifted the Spider Shepherd and Jack Nightingale series.
So this is a one off novel and, trust me, at 265 pages, you will probably devour this in a single sitting.
The headline story would be “big game Hunter has his family killed by terrorists and decides to kidnap them from their camp and hunt them in revenge”. But this is Stephen Leather so it is both multi-layered and thought provoking. By mistake a British doctor is taken along with the terrorists and mistaken for one of them. And Raj Patel is not just a doctor, he has skills that might save them all.
So, as a reader, your sympathies are slightly twisted. You might well approve of Al-Queda terrorists being hunted for their crimes. You might also have sympathy for the hunter himself, an eye for an eye and all that. And the Special Forces guys that help capture the terrorists? In most books they would be the good guys.
But. BUT, Raj is also a good guy and he is being unfairly hunted, so you have some twisted logic about who the good guys are. And that is what lifts this above being “just” a clever thriller. As always there is far more depth than you have a right to expect in a page turner.
2020 was an awful year and as we shelter indoors it has been books like this that have made the difference.

[Stephen Robert Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often think that Leather does not like Muslims a lot of his more recent books have been against the 'loony' side of the world of Muslims who spoil it for real peaceful Muslims.
This about the bad side, the big game hunter who thinks killing elephants is justified who gets a horrible poetic justice and then goes insane for revenge.
The cover stinks. If you enjoy a good chase book that reads like a Predator movie you love this.

[Ian Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the Spider Shepherd and Matt Standing books by Leather. I found this stand alone book well below par compared to the usual Spider and Standing brilliance.

Firstly, the idea of humanising terrorists who wantonly murdered innocent women and children didn't sit well with me.

Secondly, the doctor who was forced at gunpoint to operate on an isis camp then became best buds with said terrorists! Why not take them out when he had the chance in the forest and prove that he wasn't part of it?

Finally, it stretched credibility to breaking point that elite delta force warriors would miss the target so often (the doctor had more lives than 10 cats!).

The ending was poor too!

[Fred Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hunting has been eagerly anticipated by fans of Stephen Leather and rightly so.  This stand-alone novel is another great read from this author.  Lucky enough to get an advance copy (thank you as ever to Stephen), I've been waiting patiently to leave a review. 
 
The main character Van der Sandt, and to me to begin with, lead villain, shows many facets of his personality.  I absolutely abhorred his character at the beginning when he was hunting wild animals as for me, this is a huge no no. However, true to form Leather has done his research and when Van der Sandt has an argument with an anti-poacher, I had a grudging respect for his knowledge of hunting and why he did it. 
 
I then warmed to him a bit more when his wife and children and mercilessly gunned down and killed by Jihadist terrorist whilst at a five star resort in Northern Cyprus, an horrific act that left him bereft. 
 
Van der Sandt wants revenge and spares no expense to get it.  Money is not object to him, and with his contacts, he pays to track the eight terrorist down to their camp in Syria, and has them transported back to his huge estate in North America.  He vows to stalk and kill every one of them, to get his revenge.  However, chance has thrown him a curveball and he has also kidnapped a Doctor, Raj Patel, who was taken to the Syrian Camp by force to give medical attention to some wounded Jihadist.
 
Even though Raj has tried to explain who he is, Van der Sandt  doesn't believe him, and he is dropped into the vast wilderness along with the terrorists to be hunted and killed by Van der Sandt.  Patel has to form an unlikely alliance with these men, but to their utter shock, Patel is so much more than a doctor and they all need his skills. We see each of the terrorist's personalities come through, and at times almost feel sorry for them.  Stalked through the wilderness, it's survival of the fittest, as Van der Sandt  picks off his prey one by one. However, Patel is definitely not prepared to go down without a fight, and brings his former military skills into play, and the hunter becomes the hunted.
 
I am loving Stephen's standalone books.  So much research goes into them, that you cannot dispute his facts as fantasy.  A gripping read, I devoured the book in hours.  I love how he is never short of new ideas and find it so effortless and easy to recommend any of his books.  He has no trouble trying different genres, with the same quality across the board. 
 
My only question now, is when is the next book out?

[Lou · Rating 2 out of 5]

not the foggiest what was going on when they started talking about guns and stuff. at the end of the day i’m just a girl

[belle · Rating 1 out of 5]

a bit like reading the plot for a bad action movie interspersed with unnecessary animal facts and paragraphs upon paragraphs about guns. BORING 👎👎👎

[David Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written revenge thriller!

Was looking forward to this thriller for a long time. Well worth it. Revenge truly is a dish best served cold. I enjoyed the characters and their motives. A stand alone novel. I am a Stephen Leather fan and this thriller should bring him many new ones.

[John Walshe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stephen Leather was a wonderful writer but the last two books including The Hunting doesn't have the excitment of the old days. Certainly not "I can't wait to turn the next page". Really quite boring.

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cropping up in 1817 for the first time, the Promenades Aériennes--what modern folk know as a rollercoaster, started it all. Later protected with one of the earliest patents in 1885 by LaMarcus Adna Thompson, the gravity ride has been thrilling adventure seekers ever since. THE HUNTING is set up as such a thrill ride, hills and valleys aimed to toss readers hither and yon on trying to figure it all out. On the surface, it's easy to fall for the premise that looks like FIRST BLOOD meets PREDATOR meets SURVIVING THE GAME meets AVENGING FORCE meets HARD TARGET, although with a few subtle differences. The hunters are crazy, egotistical and bloodthirsty and the hunted are the victims, downtrodden by a hard life. In the tradition of ROGUE MALE and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, the story has but only one way to progress, or so it seems.

Stephen Leather works really hard for the reader to hate the (apparent) protagonist of THE HUNTING, namely by establishing him as a big game hunter a la Donald Trump Jr. and after satisfying his cravings on a rampaging elephant, "educating" a snowflake conscientious objector to killing majestic animals like Proboscidea Elephantidae. This, however, is a false flag. Hunter wants the reader to slowly warm to the billionaire investor as a human being with feelings and a family and justify his actions down the line. The big question is whether that is the right direction, as it almost seems that the protagonist is someone else entirely, and Van der Zandt is, was, and always will be the antagonist? It's almost like a metaphor of protest of US actions on the (ongoing) quest for vengeance following the atrocious terrorist events on 9/11.

During the golden age of action flicks in the 1980s, dominated by the likes of Cannon Group and Carolco Pictures, THE HUNTING would've probably been a Chuck Norris vehicle; today, it'd seem more like a Liam Neeson schlockfest. Sporting an introduction straight outta John Henry Patterson's THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO or H. Rider Haggard's KING SOLOMON'S MINES, Stephen Leather flaunts his knowledge of .500 nitro and .375 H&H Magnum rifles as well as facts about elephant life like eating 18 hours per day and the ability to put away ~400lbs of vegetation during that time. But this isn't about hunting pachyderms per se. This is about a billionaire financier losing his wife and three kids in a terrorist act, while on vacation no less. Hiding in the rubble of Syria, no price is too high to exfil the eight hailed "heroes" of jihad responsible for the outrage to the US, unofficially, of course--to enact justice, unofficially, of course. An exercise in extralegal justice for a man who just wants revenge and any eight jihadis fit the bill.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep--and there are deer, elk, pine martens, raccoons, bobcats, wolves, black bears, and oh yeah, eight terrorists. THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME for sure, turning a large acreage belonging to the big game aficionado into a hunting preserve with 8 tango dirtbags released into the wild. Will the hunt become dangerous, and will a man out for EYE FOR AN EYE style retribution become THE HUNTED or does it all end with 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG? As if 2016+, SpaceX and the Bezos haven't sufficiently established the crazy quirks of Billionaires, THE HUNTING is saying loud and clear: hold my beer! Get your drink and book together, prepare your mind to fly, screen out all the chatter, THE HUNTING takes an eye for an eye.

[Unseen Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of The Hunting from Hachette Australia to review.

Bestselling thriller author Stephen Leather comes up with another wild and intense novel in The Hunting, a fun and very entertaining read about some terrorists who find themselves going up against a very different sort of opponent.

Billionaire Jon van der Sandt is a talented big-game hunter, having tracked and killed some of the world’s most deadly and ferocious animals across all the continents. However, when his family is murdered in an attack by a team of ISIS killers, van der Sandt will embark on one last hunt against the most dangerous game of all. Hiring a group of ex special forces mercenaries, van der Sandt organises for his family’s killers to be snatched from an ISIS base and flown back to his American estates, where he intends to hunt them down one-by-one and ensure that their deaths are up close and personal.

However, a case of mistaken identity results in van der Sandt’s mercenaries accidently grabbing the wrong man, and instead of one of the terrorists the soldiers snatch Raj Patel, a British doctor being held at the camp. Unable to convince his new kidnappers of his identity, Raj finds himself dropped into the vast wilderness surrounding the isolated estate. With van der Sandt out in the woods hunting them with a high-power rifle, Raj is forced to work with the ISIS fighters, his former captors, to survive. With no provisions, no idea where they are and no mercy from a very determined van der Sandt, the prisoners have very little hope of getting out this alive. However, Raj was not always a doctor, and he is ready to become as ruthless and resourceful as the man hunting him. Let the hunt begin!

To see the full review, click the link below:
https://unseenlibrary.com/2021/02/28/...

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[Tanaka · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a thrilling beginning moving to a disappointing final.

This story is supposed to be about revenge. However, the father of a murdered wife and three kids doesn't get it the way he'd planned.

Within the group of captured Islamists there is one skilled ex-marine, who isn't a terrorist at all, but was at the wrong time at the wrong place. This guy together with the true villains fights for survival, that way killing several innocent guards.

Finally, the story takes a disappointing twist, with women- and child-murderers becoming some kind of heroes and the grieving, revenge-seeking husband/father painted as a dodgy individual.

I dislike any hunting for fun but have to admit the insight into big-game hunting is fascinating, especially when it is about the life of elephants and the damage they do to the African environment and the native people.

Altogether a good read, though for me in the light of an incomprehensible philosophy.

[Mr Natural · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hadn’t read a Stephen Leather in ages & I picked this off the library shelf on a whim.
What a mistake. Apart from the details about the ethics (!) of big game hunting and the the firearms esoterica this was ridiculous - and schizophrenic.
The first time we meet our “diverse” gang of bloodthirsty jihadists they are slaughtering holiday makers at a resort in Cyprus. The author’s views on Islam are front & centre. These are BAD guys.
Next, they are captured (don’t ask) and whisked off to the private estate of the billionaire (natch) husband & father of one of the slaughtered families, where he plans to hunt them like big game as an act of revenge - and we’re supposed to feel sorry for their plight!
Then there’s the sleeper - a commando/doctor with in-depth survival skills, roped in with the jihadists by mistake, who cheerfully kills the billionaire’s hired help.
Absolutely hopeless .
Goodbye, Mr Leather

[Lynn Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Leather is a new author to me. The book is about revenge and also about morality. A big game hunter’s family are murdered by ISIS terrorists and he wants revenge on the perpetrators. A doctor becomes entangled in the plan to hunt the murderers and he has to team with them to try to save his and their lives. Throw in some ex Delta Force and you have an exciting romp. It is bloody with lots of violence so not for everyone. I was interested in the explanation of why some hunters feel they are doing almost an environmental service by killing older elephants and it did give me something to think about, as I’m anti hunting.
The hunter feels he has the right to exact an ‘eye for an eye’. I did find the use of religion as almost a determinant of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ a little simplistic and made me feel uncomfortable. However overall I enjoyed the book.

[Kay Parsons · Rating 3 out of 5]

OTT for setting and believe-ability; too much detail in the weapons; totally non-pc killing of game animals in Africa; graphic detail of the opening scene of slaughter of tourists by ISIS. What's not to like! My first Leather novel, and I enjoyed it, but I have to confess that there were large parts of the story that were easy to skim without harming the plot, and it was a great ending. Somewhat Bryce Courtney in style. I'll have a go at another Leather novel, but i suspect he's probably not for me.

[Bob Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't upset the Raj

As ever, Stephen Leather has produced a great tale. A group of Isis terrorists attack an up market beach resort in Cyprus, wrecking havoc, killing all of the foreign holiday makers. Men, women, and children. Amongst them are a family, mum, son, and 2 daughters, all slaughtered. The husband,the children's father, is away hunting in South Africa. Once he learns of the death of his family, his hunting instincts take over, and the terrorists become the prey. Brilliant story with a great finish. I couldn't put it down.

[Ruth Hosford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven’t read a Stephen Leather book for years. This one totally grabbed me and I couldn’t put it down. It’s fairly topical with jihadists shooting and killing Westerners at a beach in north Cyprus. A man who is extremely wealthy finds out his wife and three children have been killed and he puts millions of Dollars by to seek his revenge. Caught up in this mayhem of seeking and shooting is a British doctor working in a Syrian hospital. A lot of shooting and blood and dead men form most of the story but I found it a compelling read.

[Stephen Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading Stephen Leathers books since the early 90s. I have read each and every one and I also have them all in hardback. This story was another cracker, somehow he managed to create nasty characters and then made me start to understand and have some sort of affinity for them. As always super fast paced, which is something I have always enjoyed about his books. Looking forward to the next Spider now !.

[Paul Rodgers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Leather is probably the only author that I have to read as soon as his book comes out. His storytelling is fantastic and it is always none stop action from the 1st page to the last. The hunting does not disappoint, Very much a page turner, Just gutted I finished it in two days. Highly recommend:)

[John Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hunting

The Hunting
Another masterpiece from Stephen Leather.
A slight departure from his previous books but just as exciting.
I am always impressed by the research done into the detail of his stories,precise descriptions of the weaponry and even the flora and fauna.

I eagerly await the next Spider Shepherd story.


ting

[Alan Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An attack on ISIS training camp by former special forces brings four men to a private estate in the USA where a deadly manhunt ensues,driven by a billionaire whose wife and children were slaughtered by the four terrorists But are they all guilty ? All is not as it first appears. Another fantastic read from an author that never fails.

[Lucinda Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

GO TO BOOK
I will be checking out the facts on armaments for my next book, as the author describes in detail the various weapons used by the cast. I admire the way that my initial loathing for the main character was modified into cheering him on as he ruthlessly hunts down those men who wronged him. It was a riveting read.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A shortish novel aka novella around 260 pages, has the flavour of Stephen Leather book but a little simpler due to the shorter length. It was ok, interesting insights into the thought process of a big game hunter, still annoyed me and cant stomach the hunting of wild animals how ever one justifies it. Simple and quick ending but ok read.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a fair number of Mr Leather’s books - mainly the Spider Shepherd ones but a good few of his standalone novels and have enjoyed them.
This is one of the stand-alone novels and it’s about the revenge of a big game hunter on those who killed his family but there’s quite a lot more to it. I’m loath to reveal too much but I enjoyed it and I hope others will as well.

[Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unusual story of an ISIS indiscriminate slaughter and a super rich widower's revenge, by orchestrating a hunting down of terrorists, and an innocent Marine doctors effort to stay alive after being caught up and misidentified.

Enjoyed this action adventure, not a word wasted, but well described. Read in one sitting, 5 stars well deserved.

[Sudhagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good thriller if somewhat straight-forward one.

The writer has done fantastic research on hunting and shows impressive knowledge of weapons and military tactics. The plot is fast and full of actions.

However, nothing too innovative and the plot logic is rather questionable (albeit slightly).

Good for a summer holiday read.

[Helen Perkovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic example of wrong place wrong time!

Another beauty from Stephen Leather. Fast- moving action-packed tale of mistaken identity and revenge. Buy this book you won't regret it!

[D J Prendergast · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read

An excellent read, from the Wilbur Smith style hunting scenes at the beginning to the stylish story that follows but no spoilers just read it. At least as good as hard landing the first Spider Shepherd book.

[ron harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cracking read

Stephen Leather does it again with another cracking read in “The Hunting “
After a Billionaire’s family is wiped out by terrorists he sets about taking revenge, however one of the terrorists appears to be not what he seems!!!!
All action , first class , read it !!!

[Andrew Slack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fast paced highly enthusiastic read

Another excellent stand alone novel from Stephen Leather. this writer is in a class of his.own when it comes to engaging the reader time.and time again.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant!
Another take on "The most dangerous game" a concept that has been overused. In this case an ultra-modern take, with a fantastic twist.
I cannot praise this story enough.
6 out of 5 stars.