Customer Reviews

Cold Kill (A Dan Shepherd Mystery)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, we've seen that wretched place spiral ever downward into religious and tribal warfare perpetuated by fanatics for whom the concepts of compromise, tolerance and diversity have no meaning. In light of a relatively measured response by U.S. troops that seems unable to bring order out of chaos, it's troubling to remember that Saddam's methods, brutal as they were, managed to keep a lid on the region's endemic factional hatreds (just as Tito's heavy handedness kept rein on Yugoslavia, a nation of contrived borders if there ever was one and which harbored centuries-old blood feuds). COLD KILL should confront the reader with a question. How far do otherwise "civilized" Western nations and their servant governments need to go to prevent such violence from reaching home shores in the explosive-laden backpacks of extraordinarily dedicated Muslim jihadists? Perhaps Guantanamo Bay is just a genteel tea party compared to what's necessary.

Here, ex-SAS trooper Dan Shepherd is now a Detective Constable with London's Metropolitan Police seconded to a special unit tasked with apprehending smugglers of drugs, explosives, illegal immigrants, and the like. Shepherd's current assignment is to infiltrate a ring importing bogus Euros.

In the book's first few pages, we're introduced to a shadowy Saudi Muslim that travels the world on a British passport planning and unleashing the attacks of suicide bomber teams on infidel targets, the latest being Sydney, Australia. The terrorist mastermind plots in the storyline's background with relatively little text exposure as Dan does his thing. The reader expects the paths of the two to cross eventually, the only question is how. Indeed, it was the prolonged wait for this to happen through COLD KILL's first 300 pages, during Shepherd's relatively mundane undercover gig (as Tony Corke) and his daily interaction with his young son Liam, which had me thinking "4 stars". However, once the connection between the two threads was made and the action whipsawed back and forth in the concluding seventy pages between the London-Paris Eurostar and a secret interrogation suite beneath the U.S. Embassy, COLD KILL reached nail-biting, 5-star status.

For me, a more interesting character than Dan was Charlotte Button, head of the undercover unit of the newly established Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) that, by the novel's midpoint, is to co-opt Shepherd and his talents. Button, young, polished and ambitious, comes to her new post via MI5, to which she'd directly graduated after earning a double first at Cambridge. Charlotte is sharp, no doubt, but has no blood under her fingernails, so to speak. For her, foiling the Bad Guys is a game. Thus, we see her lose her professional virginity during a few hours spent at Grosvenor Square participating in a hard-ball inquisition that would've brought a smile of fond recollection to the Lubyanka's former KGB interrogators.

At one point, author Stephen Leather makes reference to a Special Forces Club located behind Harrod's. When I made email enquiry of Stephen as to the reality of the place, he responded that it truly exists, and that the entire book is based in truth. So, if there's really a Yank torture dungeon in the bowels of the U.S. Embassy in London, then those are my tax dollars hard at work. Sure beats farm subsidies to Iowa.

I hope Leather writes a sequel featuring Shepherd and the deflowered Button, or at least the latter. Stephen, trust me on this; Charlotte is your next protagonist.

Note: This review is of the hardcover edition.

I agree with the review by Mr Haschka, who has a talent for writing amusing reviews here at amazon.com, this is indeed a 5 star thriller. Having read the previous Dan Shepherd tales, I understand quite a bit about what makes "Spider" tick. It helps to have the background info, (wrt how Dan got his nickname and his close relationship with his son and his emotional feeling of loss after his wife's death) but it isn't essential to enjoying this novel on its own. That said, I've been hooked by the author's writing style and have ordered two of Mr Leather's other books. Too, I think "Charlie" Button, head of SOCA, would be a terrific protagonist in her own series. Keep up the suspense Mr Leather!

Cold Kill is really a fine book. It gets more tense as it goes along and has a very tense ending. Spider Shepherd has to juggle several balls at once from dealing with raising a son to stopping Muslim terrorists, plus he has a new boss and isn't sure if he can trust her or not. The book is certainly a thriller but it goes deeper than that even as it moves along at breakneck speed. It goes to the heart of what the terrorists are willing to do to kill and what the Sane World has to resort to to stop them. Shepherd is a thinking man's hero and of course we learn more about the latest spy vs. spy equipment and gadgets as the plot develops. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. But watch out - then you will be hooked into the series.

This book was riviting. I could not put it down. The author compares to Daniel Silver who is one of my favourites. It is not too descriptive and not repetitive. It makes your hair stand up on end. Very exciting and very thought provoking. This is really going on?? It was my first Stephen Leather read and I can't wait to get the rest of his books.

wow, i hv to force myself to finish this book, very disappointed.

cold kill can not compare with " the china man " at all.

if u block the author's name on the cover of the book, i would not believe this book is written by leather.

in order to finish it, i hv to skip every chapter when he repeated talk with his son re the ball, the mother.

often times, it seems the author just want to get his view across to the reader.

what a waste of my time.