Review: The Sandpit by Stephen Leather

The Sandpit by Stephen Leather, (Spider Shepherd, #0.5), eARC from Netgalley, May 2016, 160p.

4 out of 5 stars.

I reviewed previously:

Black Ops (Spider Shepherd, #12) 4 stars.

The Sandpit is a prequel to the Spider Shepherd series. Just a heads up, I’m not an impartial reviewer of any of Leather’s Spider Shepherd books – it’s my favourite series. Over the past couple of years, Leather has been releasing short stories of Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd’s time in the SAS before he stumbled into his life undercover. The novels follow Dan as he goes undercover and brings down a criminal or terrorist organisation using the skills taught to him by the SAS, and to a lesser extent, the police.

The Sandpit is similar to those short stories, as opposed to the traditionally published series. That’s not to say The Sandpit is a short story – it has body and is longer than some thriller books out there. It’s just not a 500page heavyweight that the Spider Shepherd books usually are. There is more plot and intrigue in The Sandpit than any of the short stories written so far in this series.

The plot was interesting, if far fetched – it took us back in time to Afghanistan, and followed an interesting plot that although simple, drove the story forward. The best part of The Sandpit had to be returning to some of my favourite characters from previous Spider Shepherd novels, like Jimbo, Geordie and Jock. There were also the right amount of Andy McNab jokes for a book about the SAS.

The Sandpit excited me for the next Spider Shepherd novel, to the point I pre-ordered it. I also think it could be a good introduction to the series to people who usually read Andy McNab or Chris Ryan style books – the character of Dan Shepherd is similar to the protagonists from military thrillers, but he’d been dropped into the police force and assorted intelligence agencies. In The Sandpit we get Shepherd being a soldier, but still with his unique personality.

The book seemed longer than the stated 160p, it felt more like a 250p novel, but I’m not sure if that is because it was marked wrong on Amazon or that it wasn’t as easy to read as Stephen Leather’s previous books. I will happily buy any more books that Leather writes in this universe, including ones set before the ‘main’ series of books.