Hot Blood (Dan Shepherd Mystery)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Stephen Leather Our price £5.59 (£6.99) New from £2.83 Used from £0.01 Pages: 544 (Mass Market Paperback) ISBN: 0340921692 Pub: Hodder Paperback Pub date: 2007-09-20 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 9182

Reader Reviews:

Masterly... (0/0 people found this helpful)

I've read all of the other Dan Sheppard titles, and this one hit's the spot in true Stephen Leather style. I won't give away the plot, but suffice to say, I can't wait for the next to be released. While writing this review, I would also like to recommend another good read, 'The Constantine Legacy' by Andrew Towning.

Lover of Leather (0/0 people found this helpful)

I'm not going to go into the story as you must read this book for yourself! This was my first Stephen Leather read and it was absolutely fantastic. I really could not put the book down. At first I was a little put off by the fact that there are no individual chapters. Leather writes his books as one continuous story.

I am now reading "Double Tap" after just finishing "Tango One". I still have another four of his books on my shelf ready to read.

Again, go out and buy his books - In my opinion, they are BRILL !!!

Gripping thriller - with credible characters, raises moral questions too (0/0 people found this helpful)

I got given Hot Blood and Cold Kill at Christmas and have read them both in the last 48 hours. Hot Blood, the 4th in the Spider Shepherd series, sees him battling with his newish boss, a psych evaluation, UK arms dealers and the rescue of an old colleague in Iraq.

It's superbly plotted, with enough detail about the characters, including the minor ones, to bring them to life on the page. And Leather really can write, as the story moves at a cracking pace and it's very hard to put the book down at all.

There's the growth of the moral ambiguity that was there in Cold Kill - at what point is it acceptable to break UK laws, overseas laws, use violence, torture and murder to achieve ones ends, whether as a hero or a villain? And although you may or may not agree with the choices the hero makes, its development makes for a more interesting story, and again adds credibility to the characters and plot.

Leather's depictions of Iraq and Baghdad ring true with what we see on the television documentaries and it sounds like he's been there and researched it thoroughly.

If I had one complaint, it's that the central American character that facilitates much covert activity and is all to ready to torture or kill is perhaps too cliched as the representation of what one might hate about US foreign policy. But it provides a foil for Shepherd to make physical and ethical choices for or against and as such serves his purpose.

All in all, thoroughly readable and I'm about to buy the rest of the series on Amazon....

Top notch! (0/1 people found this helpful)

I have enjoyed all the Spider Shepherd books, and this is the best! It covers two parallel stoies, one of a group of British Muslims trying to buy guns in England, and secondly Spider attempting to rescue his ex-SAS buddy Geordie from kidnappers before he is beheaded in Baghdad. Leather's prognosis of the politics and the bleak situation in Iraq is up to date and seemingly real from all the headlines we do hear. The story is particularly strong as Spider has a real family at home (even as dull as moving house) and has to balance his ethical boundaries of acceptable degrees of force in order to save Geordie. The harsh endings of the 2 parallel pots are both raw reminders of how bad it really must be in the war zone and living paranoi in UK. I avidly look forward to the next Spider novel.

A more realistic hero than Jack Reacher (0/1 people found this helpful)

I bought this book for my husband and then read it myself on his recommendation. A credible, heroic main character and an insightful depiction of Allied involvement in Iraq which is cynical and empathetic at the same time. Food for thought in a high octane thriller - great stuff!

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