Review: Light Touch by Stephen Leather

Light Touch by Stephen Leather, Kindle Edition, Hodder & Stoughton, July 2017, 432p.

The latest instalment to the Spider Shepherd series is always a reading highlight for me, and year after year, Stephen Leather delivers on what I now consider a sacred day. My history with this series is deep, I read the first book of the series, Hard Landing, just after my mum passed away, while on holiday with my dad. I holed up in the hotel room and found solace in the action packed pages – which coincidentally dealt with Dan Shepherd losing his wife. It made me appreciate what my dad was going through, while also providing an escape from what I was feeling.

The last Spider Shepherd book, Dark Forces, is a favourite of mine, and I was worried that the follow up wouldn’t meet my high expectations. Also, as Light Touch is the fourteenth book in this series, I was worried that things would be becoming stale and overdone. That was not the case – Leather is excellent at creating tense and thrilling plots that are original and enthralling.

In Light Touch Spider is sent after a drug dealer who is importing drugs using catamarans. He is also there to check up on another undercover agent. This takes place after he helped bring down a terrorist plot in London. I found this plot to not be as strong as most of the undercover plots that are featured in Spider Shepherd novels. However, we are also introduced to ‘Lastman’ Standing, a SAS soldier with some pretty intense and hilarious anger management issues. Standing is sent to London by the SAS to undergo anger management therapy and finds himself taking down bad guys left and right while also focusing on his breathing exercises.

Spider Shepherd is my favourite fictional character. But in Light Touch, the Matt Standing story line is much more entertaining and fleshed out. It could have warranted a full novel in it’s own light, rather than stealing the limelight from Spider Shepherd. I’d love to read more novels featuring Standing – and I would also love it for there to be Spider Shepherd and ‘Lastman’ Standing crossovers, but they both had plots in this novel that deserved main plot status, and instead we had these two plots racing side by side and competing for attention. Another alternative would be to have both these strong characters working on the same plot from different angles or even as a team.

One thing that has made me a little less in love with these novels is that there is a racial undertone – almost bordering on racist – through these novels. Many of the characters take the time to express their borderline racist opinions – and although it is not Spider Shepherd who has these opinions (and he often argues against them) the obsession with race and skin colour gets old. A mention or two in a novel that features Islamic terrorism is fine and expected – but a constant commentary on racial issues gets tiresome. I imagine that for most people this wouldn’t even be mentionable, but it is something i have realised I am sensitive to, and is featured often in thriller novels.

I won’t elaborate on things that I loved about this novel in detail because it would be major spoilers for those who haven’t read previous novels – but Spider’s life has changed so much when compared to only three or four novels previously. It’s great that Leather is constantly evolving his character and making him change. It gets old quick when characters stay the same in each book, never changing. His romantic situation in this novel is a novelty for longtime Spider Shepherd readers, and although we didn’t get any interactions with Liam, his son, we were updated on what he is doing.

Light Touch is another great Spider Shepherd novel to add to the collection, and a book that I will return to in the future. I do hope we get a series of SAS novels about Matt Standing, because for my money, he is one of the most interesting characters to have existed in this universe. We have had a Lex Harper spin-off – give us a Standing one too, please!

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.

Review: Hellfire by Chris Ryan

Hellfire by Chris Ryan, (Danny Black, #3), Trade paperback from library, August 2015, 391p.

I live tweeted this book: #iloveoilrigs

4 stars.

Hellfire slowly built up the tension and suspense until I was frantic in the final 70 pages. I always forget how epic the conclusions of Chris Ryan’s works are, and Hellfire certainly delivered. At times it felt like I was racing against the clock alongside the protagonist of this series, Danny Black. I’m a sucker for anything with nautical themes, and so seeing a picture of an oil rig on the front of a favourite authors’ book – I jumping up and down to get reading!

This is the third novel in the Danny Black series, and I have given all the books in the series a four star rating. I feel like each one adds a little more to the background characters that feature in the series. The most infuriating character ever written (ever!) features in this series, Mr. Hugo Buckingham. The desire to punch Buckingham in the face is all encompassing, and I certainly was rooting for Danny to just lose his cool and let fly.

Danny Black as a character is fairly stock standard, he is the guy you want to come to your rescue. I found it interesting in this novel when he was thinking about his morals, convictions and motivations. Black spends much of the book looking down on his team mate Tony because he seems to be associated with some shady business and is a general all around douchebag. Tony is connected with the seedy underbelly of London, and I sure didn’t like the guy. However, all of the torture that Black seems to constantly engage in doesn’t even get a second thought from the protagonist. Now, I understand that this is an action novel, where it’s all about the thrills – plus – in a time constricted, high stakes situation maybe torture could be used (that is a could, not a should), but the fact that Danny Black seems to be completely at peace with what he has to do to get the job done seems a bit strange to me. Maybe I’m just becoming too much of a bleeding heart in my old age.

In Hellfire we are introduced to a new character, Caitlin. She is Australian and awesome. As an Australian woman myself, I am partial to kick ass Aussie women. I would have liked a little bit of information on her, but she certainly held up her end and was portrayed as just as capable as the men in the unit. At the beginning of the novel there certainly was an element of the unit being unsure if she would be a liability – but Ryan wrote the character with integrity and a no-nonsense attitude. By the end of the novel she was just another member of the unit, and the only concession made to her was people not referring to the unit as ‘guys’ or ‘men’. I hope that she shows up in future novels, because I think her story could be very interesting!

Those who are familiar with Ryan’s style will be comfortable with this effort – it is condense, terse and fast paced. There are few adjectives and when they are included they are usually to describe machines or pieces of kit. This is exactly the type of prose I enjoy – to the point and no-nonsense. It can take a while to settle back into this style after reading wordy literature for school, but I always appreciate the break.

If you are looking for an action-packed thrill ride (with added oil rig!), you can do no wrong in picking up a Chris Ryan novel, although I would advise starting with the first in the Danny Black series – Masters of War.

BOB Spell it out Challenge

This looks like a fun challenge to participate in, so I decided to use my first name – Rebecca, and then realised in the past four years I haven’t read a single book starting with the letter E – let alone two of them! So I decided to go with my birth month – August (you know, cause Leo was also out).

A – Aggressor by Andy McNab

U – Undersea Prison by Duncan Falconer

G – Good Jihadist, The by Bob Shepherd

U – Ultimate Weapon by Chris Ryan

S – Strike Back by Chris Ryan

T – Traitor by Duncan Falconer

Okay, so I decided to use books only by ex-SAS and ex-SBS authors! SUE ME.