Can't Beat a Bit of Leather

Can’t believe that Stephen Leather’s novels escaped my notice until this year. Author of more than 30, he’s hardly new on the block. A former journalist with a number of high circulation newspapers, he has also written for TV shows. His books fall into several distinct groupings and, given that I’m a huge Jack Reacher fan (Lee Child), I decided to start with the first of Leather’s Dan Shepherd novels, Hard Landing.  It was first published in 2004, and I haven’t read any reviews before writing what follows. I hope that this brings an independence of thought which at least offsets anything that may have been said or written already about the novel, and which I have unknowingly repeated. If I am repeating comments made already, maybe there's a reason for that - but it's certainly not plagiarism.

This is the kind of book I relax with – high brow fiction rarely makes my reading list: populist physics books do, theological/philosophical exploration does too but, when it comes to relaxing, I’ll pretty much always turn to escapist fiction which is neither too demanding, nor excessively gritty/sordid. And, in that vein, it’s hard to beat books where wrongs are righted, and baddies beaten.  Enter Dan Shepherd (“Spider” to his mates). Shepherd is ex-SAS, and employed in an elite undercover police squad. He puts himself in situations where angels may fear to tread, in order to tie the hand of baddies. In Hard Landing, Shepherd finds himself getting thrown in prison (not exactly of his own volition) in order to bring down a really bad guy who, despite being locked up, has been continuing to import and distribute hard drugs, and bump off those that get in his way. Shepherd’s job is to gather information and bring him down; and naturally he gets in a few scrapes along the way.

I’d give this, the first of the Shepherd series, a big thumbs-up overall. Without introducing any significant plot-spoilers, I’ll mention some of the strong points as well as a couple of moments where a weakness threatened to break the escapist spell – where something rendered not quite accurately makes the reader realize that he (or she) is reading fiction as opposed to being in the midst of an alternative reality.

To get the latter over with quickly, a central character gets a head injury and is taken to hospital, where he’s told there’s no point him waiting for an MRI because the queue’s so long that, if there was something wrong, he’d be dead before it was detected. Apart from the fact that this ignores that emergency services triage (prioritise) patients on the basis of clinical need, the preferred scan for acute head injury is CT rather than MR. Again on a medical theme, there's a description of a home-made weapon with 2 razor blades set into a toothbrush to create tram-line lacerations “a couple of millimetres apart so that no surgeon could repair the damage done to the skin.” Even when carefully sutured, the victim “would have to remain immobile while the wounds healed. Any movement would rip the double cuts apart.” In reality, on encountering such a wound, it would be quite possible to excise the middle couple of millimeters of skin, and repair the wound as a single incision, since the skin’s natural elasticity would permit approximation of the edges. This would be how old scars are excised. It is usual, and in fact desirable, for folk with an abdominal wound following surgery to mobilize early rather than remaining immobile for more than a week while the wound healed.

I also found the notion of a visit to an undercover agent in prison by his real family, including his young child, to stretch credibility. This was stretched further when he asked his son to keep it a secret that his dad was in prison. I’m no expert on undercover work but that didn’t seem like how an “elite” squad would operate…

Anyway, enough of the quibbles. This was an entertaining and exciting read, and the above were only minor wobbles in a great thriller. Spider Shepherd is a hard man, who has seen a lot of bad stuff, and wants to play his part in making the world a bit better. His work had hardened him in a number of ways:

“He didn’t believe in God. His time in the SAS had destroyed whatever religious beliefs he might ever have held, and his police career had done nothing to convince him that a higher power was taking care of things. The world was a mean, vicious place where the strong devoured the weak, and where bad things happened to good people. Shepherd wanted nothing to do with any god that countenanced such unfairness.”

Sounds like a paraphrase of some psalms.
“But what Shepherd believed and what he wanted his son to believe were two different things.” So much for an ugly truth being better than a pretty lie. And what about ugly lies and pretty truths?

I did enjoy that the satellite phone which an army major had to carry at all times (to be ready to respond to instructions from on high in the command structure) was named The Almighty.

For Slicer, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the book contained a scene of a trip to Northern Ireland, with accurate detail regarding locations, and a great account of robbing a ‘real IRA’ arms dump; along with some much more credible descriptions of undercover work, including the kind of ethical compromises that it necessitates if the agent wants to stand a realistic chance of survival. The excitement of the story built from about halfway through, and as with any good read, when he’d finished the book Slicer was left missing the characters and craving the next installment.

As is Slicer's wont, he had to find a suitable soundtrack for Hard Landing. It wasn't necessary to leave Irish shores to find it - tho' it was necessary to get a bit retro...

  

It has to be said, they had a certain affinity for leather too.

Comments

[Niallmcclure]

Sorry Stephen Leather is out of bounds for me....a charlatan and a bully...logs into loads of websites to self promote and frankly, well words fail me.....see article below....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/nick-cohen-cheating-authors-journalists?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

[The Slicer]

Thanks for commenting, Niall. Much has been written in the press on this, from various angles - especially in the last few days. Those defending Leather point out that he's not hiding that he promotes his work under pseudonyms (as even the Guardian article you reference shows), and that many authors pay to have positive reviews, or get those who have a vested interest to do the same. The severest criticism has been in relation to those who post negative reviews of other authors' work, or personal attacks, under pseudonyms.

I wouldn't wish to defend fraudulent activity but, given the nature of this blog, I'm hardly going to criticise the use of pseudonyms :-D.

As someone who uses Tripadvisor reasonably often, I've often wondered how many hotel reviews/ratings are written by hotel staff. It doesn't stop me using it, and in fact I've often found it a good guide - finding out that a hotel has rated itself highly wouldn't stop me staying in a good one (tho if its staff unjustly rated a competitor hotel badly, and I found out, it might make me think again). Finding out that a writer has self-promoted under a pseudonym wouldn't stop me making my own mind up whether his book is any good or not.

I certainly don't tend to carry out a character assessment of actors or directors before I go to see a film, or of authors or painters or musicians, or architects or builders, before I buy their work. I'd be surprised if many folk do.

I liked Leather's book overall, and I did what his critics have called for - write an independent review. Ellory & Leather's critics have suggested that readers do this more, in order to dilute the effect of self-promotion - whether overt, or covert.

Feel free to come back with any more thoughts.