Andy McNab goes from strength to strength with thrillers that both have depth and sound tech-knowledge.
This, another episode in the nail-biting life of ex-deniable operator, Nick Stone, involves the tough operative trying to get used to working with a team again after a long series of operations where he relies only on his own training and smarts. But this isn’t any old highly trained well-oiled team. It is three ex-soldiers with four legs and five arms between them, but what they lack in limbs they make up for in guts and determination. Initially dubious of their having any possibility of survival, Nick come to realise that his leadership is not the only asset they can rely on.
What binds the four men is the knowledge they each have in their heads, and, more reliably, on memory sticks each has hidden away, about a clandestine mission that they survived in polar regions. The exposure of that would embarrass the organisation that authorised the mission, run by the man they know as the Owl, who would dearly like to obliterate both the men and their sticks.
With mutual distrust, the Owl gives them another mission, and a promise of a good payout: Find, and lift, a young Russian computer hacker in Cornwall.
Andy McNab, perhaps…
We are led through the preliminary phase of the persuasion that their best bet to survive is to keep together and beat the Owl at his own game, then on to the ever-tightening mission. Finding out what the hacker and her minders are up to is one phase, but the disasters and dangers and suspicion of a mole in their midst follow in unputdownable succession.
Another five star winner from the soldier who has the tee-shirt.
Thanks to PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, South Africa for this ARC for whom I have given this honest review.
ISBN 9780953078952, Bantam Press Imprint. www.penguin.co.uk
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