Live Fire

I recently finished reading another book in the riveting thriller series about Dan "Spider" Shepherd by English novelist Stephen Leather. It's interesting that part of LIVE FIRE's plot takes place in Pattaya, Thailand, a place I had never heard of before reading the novel. This morning, though, I read the name of this idyllic beach resort in an AP News Story. Pattaya is presently in the grip of anti-government rioters. The East Asian Summit that was to take place there has been canceled because of political unrest in the country. What a coincidence. Of course, that has nothing to do with the plot of this very good novel. Suffice it to say, I found Shepherd's further adventures to be as exciting as in the previous 5 or 6 novels about the undercover cop for The Serious Organised Crime Agency "SOCA". There was something in the book that I found disturbing...namely, the subplot about fanatical "Home Grown Islamo-fascist Terrorists" planning a massacre of two hundred or more innocent Brits to broadcast via the media that "Europe is the Cancer - Islam is the Answer." (Hence, my awarding 4.5 stars and not 5.) I prefered the rest of the book and Dan's insertion into the British Gang of Professional Thieves, led by the high living Moore brothers who are based in Pattaya, and his eventual acceptance by the brothers as a team player in their next Big Heist on English soil. Dan has to race against time to...well, I won't spoil it for you, but there is a surprise twist at the end of the book I didn't expect. I understand that Stephen Leather is thinking about writing a book centered on the character of Charlotte "Charlie" Button, Dan's Boss at SOCA. It's time Dan became involved romantically with a beautiful, strongwilled woman. He's been alone for far too long. I wholeheartedly recommend this novel to fans of Leather's other books and those who are reading him for the first time. While it would help the reader to know about "Spider's" past, it is not necessary to enjoy the story, as this book can stand by itself.

In LIVE FIRE, author Stephen Leather's hero of several novels, Dan "Spider" Shepherd, an undercover operative with Her Majesty's Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), is off to Thailand to infiltrate a Pattaya-based British gang of master bank robbers that periodically returns home to replenish the funds for its exorbitant lifestyle. Meantime in London, a home-grown cell of Muslim jihadists is planning a bloody outrage that'll kill hundreds. Because of Spider's particular karma, the two plots ultimately intersect. Leather spends much of his time living in Thailand. Therefore, it's no surprise that the storyline of LIVE FIRE puts Shepherd there for most of the narrative, but is somewhat surprising that the author has taken so long in the series to do so. Leather's physical description of Pattaya and its status as "the biggest single prostitution center in the world" suggests a comfortable familiarity with the place. (For a depiction of the Thai sex industry, see Stephen's excellent novel, Private Dancer.) For readers whose first encounter with Spider is LIVE FIRE, the plot deserves 5 stars. For one such as me, who's followed his exploits over the years, it rates 4. The Shepherd character has perhaps become too familiar and/or I've become jaded. In order to introduce the new reader to Dan's career path with SOCA, the narrative inevitably begins with the end game of a crime caper from which Spider must extract himself as the cops close in but before his cover is blown. Then, he immediately gets new marching orders to follow for the duration of the story from his boss, Charlotte "Charlie" Button. Subsequently, there are a couple pages in which Dan, a single father, has a guilt trip when he tells his young son, Liam, and his dead wife's parents that he's off on another job and won't be around to spend quality time. (While I know this digression establishes Spider's just-a-regular-bloke humanity to newbies, perhaps next time we could move forward a decade when Liam is interested in girls and won't miss Dad so much.) It's in LIVE FIRE that Dan is first inferred to be carrying a torch for his boss, Charlie Button, for which felling evidence surfaces during a visit to one of Pattaya's bars: "There were two pneumatic blondes dancing topless and a stunning redhead in a red thong and high heels doing a solo on the second podium ... Two more girls joined the redhead. One was a blonde with wavy hair, green eyes and milk-white flawless skin, the other a brunette with a pageboy hair-cut and dark brown eyes. She was like Charlotte Button, Shepherd thought, disconcerted. 'You like her?' asked Sergei. Shepherd reddened like a schoolboy who'd been caught looking at a pornographic magazine. 'She's fit,' he said." Now, I bring this up because I think Button one of the more intriguing characters of the Spider series. Plus, I suspect that she's hot. So I'd like to take the cheeky liberty of suggesting to the author the emphasis of a future book, i.e. that th