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COLD KILL
by Stephen Leather
Hodder and Stoughton, February 2006
432 pages
18.99GBP
ISBN: 0340834102


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The coastguard comes near a boat bringing illegal immigrants into the UK. The captain of the vessel gets the people out of the hold and starts to try to throw them overboard. A young girl does fall into the sea and Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, in his guise as a member of the crew, jumps into the cold water and rescues her.

Counterfeit money is found in the luggage of one of the immigrants, the father of the young girl Spider saved. He gets a name from the man, but then is horrified to learn that the girl's father bit through his wrist and committed suicide, because he was so afraid of the men who made him carry the contraband.

Al Qaeda has learned that all arabs are suspect when traveling into different countries so they have been recruiting Muslims of Bosnian descent, who manage to set off a bomb in Sydney, Australia, killing many people. Bombs are also scheduled to blow up in Phuket, Thailand, but a tsunami kills many more people, including the suicide bombers, than the Muslim fanatics ever could. The next target is London.

Meanwhile, Spider is traveling to France to meet with the boss of the counterfeiting operation. Shepherd's boss tells him that the group he works with is being transferred to the equivalent of the British Homeland Security agency under a woman from MI5.

The transfer goes on while the operation is going on, and Spider is very unhappy about it. During a crucial time, the new boss is unavailable. Unbeknownst to Spider, she is working with the CIA in the basement of the American Embassy on Grosvenor Square, torturing a Saudi in order to find out where the next bomb will go off.

Stephen Leather writes a good thriller. He tries to make his characters more than the cardboard cut-outs of the usual thriller. Shepherd is a single father who is trying to raise his nine-year-old son while pursuing a dangerous profession. His new boss, a woman who thinks espionage is a game, begins to show some humanity in the basement of the American Embassy.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, March 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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