The Double Tap

In a previous Stephen Leather thriller, THE LONG SHOT, ex-SAS Sergeant Mike Cramer is instrumental in foiling an assassination plot against the U.S. President and the British Prime Minister. Along the way, he's horrifically tortured by a fiendish, female, IRA terrorist in a manner that would have broken lesser literary and cinematic tough guys. But Cramer prevails. Here, in THE DOUBLE TAP, Cramer is dying of stomach cancer. Wishing to go out fighting, he volunteers to act as the bait to entrap and liquidate a faceless international hit man that attracts the attention of the SAS after he kills a friend of the Prime Minister, who demands action. Thus, Mike assumes the identity of a reclusive millionaire businessman known to be on the assassin's short hit list. With the help of SAS trainers, Cramer practices quick-draw techniques in the hope that he can swiftly out-gun the Bad Guy, who specializes in double taps, i.e., a first shot to the head and a second to the chest close-up with a hand gun. Unknown to Cramer and the SAS, however, the former has another predator on his track, IRA soldier Dermott Lynch, out to avenge the execution of his wife, an IRA bomber, years before during an SAS raid on an IRA safe house in which Sergeant Cramer participated. Who'll get to Mike first? THE DOUBLE TAP is decidedly better than THE LONG SHOT. In the latter, Cramer shared hero duties with an FBI agent, and, consequently, readers' loyalties might understandably be divided. Moreover, the potential repercussions of THE LONG SHOT were more international than personal, and the plot as a whole consequently perhaps less engaging. Leather remedies both shortcomings here with a leaner and meaner plot while at the same time providing a clever end-game twist that fools Mike and his SAS controller. It's a shame Leather thought it necessary terminate Cramer's career. One can only hope that he was buried with all due honors in the parallel universe of literary fiction.

Great read, the hunt for an assasin takes former SAS officer Mike Cramer around the world. The assassin has never failed and always kills the same way - two shots to the head, the double tap of the title. The only way Cramer can stop the killer is to take the next target's place. Gripping characters and a fast-paced style that makes the book difficult to put down. Leather isn't widely known in the US - but he deserves to be.