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DEAD MEN
by Stephen Leather
Hodder & Stoughton, January 2008
376 pages
19.99 GBP
ISBN: 0340921706


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

August 3 1994. The IRA signs a ceasefire. Two years later, five men break into a house and kneecap and kill a man in front of his wife and child. The man is Inspector Robert Carter of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Over the years, and because of the terms of the ceasefire, all the men are found, tried and freed. Then, their bodies start turning up. Each has been kneecapped and shot in the head, just like Robbie Carter had been. Is his widow responsible?

Meanwhile, Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, now working for SOCA, the Serious Organized Crime Agency, is under cover as David Hickey, a bouncer turned enforcer working on a case involving drug smuggling by Algerians via Eurostar from France. Once that is sorted, Spider returns home to his 11-year-old son, Liam. Three years earlier, Spider's wife was killed in a car accident, so Liam, Spider, and the au pair, Katra, moved to Hereford, near Liam's grandparents.

Then there is the other subplot (or is it the main one?) of a militant Islamist trying to kill Spider's boss because she was involved in the interrogation of a man who died. Up to now, the story just seems to be another bloody thriller, but things get much more complicated when Spider goes undercover in Belfast to find out if Elaine Carter is murdering her husband's killers.

Things get very complicated when one considers both the morality and legality of murder. Is it moral to allow someone to kill accidentally? Where do morality and legality cross? Is there any difference between the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, which is really a religious war between Catholic and Protestant or the Jihads of the Muslim world, where all infidels are fair game? Where does it begin to be murder and when does it stop being 'the right thing to do?'

These are tough questions that Leather attempts to address. If you can get past the blood and gore of the first few chapters, you will be pleasantly surprised at the philosophical bent this book takes while still maintaining suspense.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, January 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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