Showing results by author "Stephen Leather" in All Categories

"The bosun explained that E & E was so important to the regiment that every badged soldier and officer must do an E & E every couple of years.... It was the ultimate test: You were good, or you were caught." The final hurdle in the SAS selection process - the E & E exercise. The aim is to evade capture and to resist interrogation when finally caught. So when Spider Shepherd is captured, he doesn’t immediately think anything is wrong.

Geoff Howells, a government-trained killing machine, is brought out of retirement and sent to Hong Kong. His brief: to assassinate Chinese Mafia leader Simon Ng. Howells devises a dangerous and complicated plan to reach his intended victim - only to find himself the next target.

Why does a wealthy Scottish financier set up a drugs deal with the IRA? Jeopardise his career, endanger his family and lover by tangling with the East End underworld and a ruthless mercenary? The motive is simple: revenge for a cold-blooded act of murder. His adversary is a dangerous gangland boss whose connections stretch from the Highlands to London and beyond. More than a match for a newcomer, especially when his plans contain a fatal flaw, which will be discovered only when it is much too late…

When career criminal Terry Greene is sentenced to life for a murder he didn't commit, his wife has two choices: to walk away from the criminal empire he'd built up, or to take it over - to become as big a gangster as her husband. So far as Samantha "Sam" Greene is concerned, there is no choice. All the family's assets are tied up in the business, and the family means more to her than anything else.

Premier League footballer Gabe Savage is on the way to one of the most important matches of his life when he gets a phone call from his wife. She has been kidnapped along with their young son. And the message from her captors is brutal: 'If your team wins, your family dies.' With the kickoff only hours away, there is only one person Gabe can turn to - his brother, Ray, a vicious London gangster. But a dark family secret means that he hasn't spoken to Ray for years. Can Ray help? And will he?

Vicky Lewis is a force to be reckoned with: not yet 30 and already Crew Manager in the London Fire Brigade, she's destined for great things. But when she enters a burning building to save a man's life and leaves it with catastrophic injuries, all that changes. She's shunted over to the Fire Investigation Unit, where she's forced to team up with cantankerous veteran Des Farmer, aka the Grouch.

A dead body in the prayer hall of a mosque isn't the best start to the day for anyone. But for Detective Inspector Harold Porter it's all in a day's work. The problem is that DI Porter has been given a new partner - a young Muslim detective by the name of Mohammed Salim Nasri. Nasri and Porter are both British and both cops, but they look at the world - and the case - from completely different viewpoints. And when that case includes Islamic terrorists and knife-wielding fanatics that can only mean problems.

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd was sipping his first coffee of the day as the sweat from his morning run slowly dried on his skin. Kept on standby in Cyprus, Shepherd and his patrol mates are getting fed up with the lack of action. When they're offered the opportunity to spend some time in Nepal, they jump at the chance. Whilst there, they meet an SAS living legend, and are roped into a mission.

"Dan 'Spider' Shepherd shifted position slightly, trying to ease the pressure from the rocks beneath him and the ammo belt pressing into his chest. He lay prone, scanning the terrain through his sniper scope." After the Taliban unleash an attack on a military checkpoint, Spider Shepherd suspects foul play. He was too late to stop the attack, but he’s determined to find out how they knew where to strike. With the help of a local boy named Karim, he decides to investigate.

Carolyn Castle is one of the most famous faces in the UK - a soap opera star known to millions. But when she witnesses a gangland killing, she has to ask herself if her fame could be the death of her. The killer is charismatic gangster Warwick Richards. A man more than capable of killing again to protect his secret. But does he know that Carolyn saw him commit murder?

"We’re professional soldiers,” said Shepherd. “We fight for queen and country. There’s a hell of a difference between us and mercenaries.” Spider Shepherd and the rest of his men are called upon to stop a bunch of South African mercenaries who have disobeyed orders and plundered diamond fields in Sierra Leone from reaching the Liberian border.

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd was standing on the flight deck of an RAF Hercules C-130, leaning on the back of the pilot's seat and anxiously scanning the horizon ahead of them in the first faint light of dawn. Spider Shepherd and his patrol mates are heading back to Cyprus when an urgent situation arises, and they are pressed into action. A sensitive operation planned by HQ, they are sent into the Arabian desert to take on a group of dangerous terrorists.

New York City. With a population of almost 19 million people, it’s easy to remain anonymous - even if you’re a serial killer, torturing and murdering beautiful young women. The killer has another victim right now, locked in a basement somewhere in the city. For NYPD detectives Turner and Marcinko, it’s their job to sift through those 19 million and narrow their list to the one before it’s too late. And they’re sure they have the right man in their sights.

It’s been a long time since Jack Nightingale has taken confession. But repenting for his sins is not the only reason he has come to visit Father O’Grady - he needs him to perform an exorcism. Billy has been possessed by Bakka, a powerful demon who is Satan’s most loyal servant, and Jack must race to save the boy, and the world, from succumbing to the greatest evil imaginable.

South London gangster Perry Smith doesn’t scare easily, but when four of his associates are brutally ripped apart by a demon called Amy, he calls in Jack Nightingale. Nightingale thinks it’s a wind-up - the gang contacted the demon via an iPad app whilst on holiday. But before he knows it, he’s on his way to Fuengirola, with his assistant, Jenny McLean, to send Amy back to where she came from.

Tarot cards predict the future, right? Trust Jack Nightingale to find a pack that can change that future...and of course he 'borrows' a card and signs a Latin contract he can’t read in his own blood. Can Jack and his longtime assistant Jenny McLean thwart the cards and destroy his and dozens of other contracts? Would anyone put money on a demon triumphing when Nightingale is on a mission?

Dan Shepherd stared at the canvas ceiling above his bed as the dawn light slowly strengthened. His tent was pitched on the edge of the airfield outside Sarajevo in Bosnia. 1995, and Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is on active service as a paratrooper in war-torn Sarajevo. Frustrated by the army, when he is tasked with accompanying an SAS patrol in the area, he realises that the SAS is where he belongs.

In the middle of the night, two young infants start screaming in their bedroom as the temperature drops, the baby mobiles spin wildly and the room is filled with an aura of fear, panic and dread.... Jack Nightingale is called to investigate these spooky goings on in the house of occult-metal rock star Jimmy Deadman and his health-crazed supermodel wife, Mary Madison. To try to work out what’s going on and save the poor children from the haunting, he must delve into the history of the town and the house itself and discover the meaning of two mysterious occultist lockets gifted to the babies on the day of their baptism.

Somewhere along Route 74, Jack Nightingale takes a wrong turn, ending up at a nightmarish convention for serial killers. When things start getting out of hand, Nightingale has to step in to stop more blood being shed.

Finally with some time off, Jack Nightingale decides to take a scenic tour of some haunted sites on the American East coast. But when a strange doll is dumped in the road in front of him, what was meant to be a break for rest and relaxation turns into a battle for life and death; the doll is powerful, murderous and evil. And Nightingale may have unwittingly made himself its next target....