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Sheepdogs

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Sheepdogs

By: Elliot Ackerman
Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

TWO MISFITS.
ONE MISSION.
ZERO BACK-UP.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck after being screwed over by the US military. Skwerl used to work for the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing until he was unceremoniously fired after a raid went bad in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary Afghan pilot also formerly employed by the CIA, is stuck working the graveyard shift at the local gas station.

Armed with a ton of unique and not obviously useful skills for peacetime living, both are recruited into a shadowy network of so-called ‘sheepdogs’ working jobs for an anonymous dispatcher.

Their first mission? To repossess a luxury private jet stranded on a remote Ugandan airfield. Their fee: a cut of the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up. Their contact vanishes. Their handler’s motives are suspect. And when the women in their lives get involved – one pregnant wife and one dominatrix – the stakes skyrocket overnight.

From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, Sheepdogs is a sly, hilarious, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo. Operating in the moral grey zone between predator and prey, this is a wild ride through the absurd underworld of war and intelligence.

‘You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . glorious . . . hilarious' SUNDAY TIMES

'A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure' WASHINGTON POST

‘Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian – these characters are totally addictive. I couldn’t put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride’ HARLAN COBEN

‘Sheepdogs is the best thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished . . . an absolute gem of a novel’ KEVIN POWERS

© Elliot Ackerman 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Action & Adventure Espionage International Mystery & Crime Literature & Fiction Mystery Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Political Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Exciting Funny Witty Military War Africa

Critic Reviews

There's a new Maverick hero on the block . . . fun and pacy . . . thrilling (Simon Ings)
An unorthodox and highly contemporary spy thriller, set in the shadowlands between legal and illegal military action . . . a black comedy with deadly serious undertones
A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure. But if the novel has its fair share of tropes, Ackerman is also determined to unravel a few of them, to expose how corrupting a world full of crumbling democracies can be . . . Sheepdogs thrives in exposing the moral uncertainty of this new world order (Mark Athitakis)
Akerman has been reflective, elegiac, often ruefully nostalgic, at times quietly angry, always sternly principled, and analytical to the point of prophetic . . . Sheepdogs is a gear shift into deceptively rip-roaring caper mode (Celia McGee)
Lean but globe-trotting, it’s both funny and deadly earnest. Where lots of military thrillers lean on gruff brutality, this instead lends something like the castoff perspective of Slow Horses to the chaotic pessimism of David O Russell’s film, Three Kings (Brian Cliff & Elizabeth Mannion)
A black-ops comedy of errors (Mark Yost)
A plane heist goes outrageously awry . . . lively . . . moving . . . Though his tone is light, Ackerman regularly reminds the reader of the lifelong shadow war casts on the men who fight (Rav Grewal-Kök)
Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian—these characters are totally addictive. I couldn’t put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride (Harlan Coben, author of Nobody's Fool)
Sheepdogs is the best thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished. Here’s hoping this isn’t the last we’ll hear of Skwerl, Cheese and the rest of Ackerman’s unforgettable band of misfits. It’s an absolute gem of a novel (Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds)
A gripping CIA crime novel already on the fast track to TV – you really don't want to miss this one
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