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Hard Landing (Dan Shepherd Mysteries)

Author: Stephen Leather
Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

9 reviews
Sales Rank: 9986

Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.3 x 1.3

ISBN: 0340734116
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780340734117
ASIN: 0340734116

Publication Date: August 16, 2004
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: We ship daily from the United Kingdom

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - Hard Landing
•	Hardcover - Hard Landing
•	Audio Cassette - Hard Landing
•	Audio CD - Hard Landing
•	Paperback - Hard Landing

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Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Great intro to Spider October 6, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

This is the first of Leathers books to feature Dan Shepherd, and it is a cracker! Carpenter is a drug dealer on remand in a high security prison but managing to kill off witneses so his case won't go to trial. Carpenter has a huge span of control both in and out of the nick. Enter Spider, undercover to make sure Carpenter gets convicted. This is a great and tense game of chess with Carpenter having a strong network and Spider always under the risk of being found as a cop in jail. Great story, but could have been edited down 100 pages, nevertheless.

4 out of 5 stars

Standard Prison story with a cracking end March 22, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Leather has written some amazing books and this for anyone else would be a good book but not quite as amazing as his early ones. The story starts off with Dan Shepherd being arrested and put in prison to get information on a really nasty drug runner who has killed off most of anyone who can finger him. The scenes are pretty graphic and the action as far as it can get in a prison is pretty hard and fast. The ending makes a huge extra point to the book.

Not bad.

5 out of 5 stars

New literary Tough Guy hits the ground running February 14, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

HARD LANDING was the first in the Stephen Leather's series of thrillers starring Dan "Spider" Shepherd, an ex-SAS trooper now assigned to an elite Metropolitan police unit tabbed for deep undercover operations when the usual enforcement methods can't nab the bad guys. Dan's nickname came to be while on an SAS survival training mission and he won a bet on who could eat the most disgusting thing. One normally doesn't see "tarantula" on the menu even in the greasiest curry house.

HARD LANDING was followed by SOFT TARGET and COLD KILL, all three of which I've unintentionally read in reverse order. I'd recommend reading the first book first since, if nothing else, the series is a character development exercise for the protagonist.

Here, Spider is tossed into one of Her Majesty's maximum security prisons after establishing his cover as an armed desperado on an airport warehouse hold-up gone bad. Dan's mission is to nail big-time drug trafficker Gerald Carpenter, currently in the same lock-up awaiting trial. Carpenter is somehow communicating with the outside and masterminding the quashing of evidence and killing of witnesses that would otherwise convict him. Fearing Gerald will ultimately go free, Shepherd's job is to identify the leak and thus ensure Carpenter's conviction.

Spider's job prevents him from having a normal home life with his wife Sue and son Liam, a fact that causes the inevitable friction with the former and neglect of the latter and which is exacerbated by a tragedy that occurs while Dan is behind bars. I previously mentioned in my review of SOFT TARGET (dated 11/4/06 and entitled "A whopping cell phone bill, no doubt") that the author perhaps dwelled too much on Spider's spotty relationship with his son, which caused me to knock off a star from that otherwise splendid tale. With Shepherd, I'm looking for hard-boiled action not agonized soul-searching. (My other favorite fictional Tough Guy, Lee Child's Jack Reacher, never ever moons about engaging in self-castigating guilt trips.) I gave COLD KILL five stars (dated 6/29 06 and entitled "How hardball do we play it?") because it maximized the action and minimized the hand-wringing, and I'm giving HARD LANDING a full allocation of points for the same reason.

Until commencing with the Dan Shepherd series, Leather had pretty much eschewed an ongoing hero beyond a couple of books. With Spider, Stephen has struck gold, and I'm eagerly awaiting the fourth installment, HOT BLOOD.

2 out of 5 stars

Too much tough-guy codswallop February 1, 2007
3 out of 8 found this review helpful

TOUGH undercover cop and former SAS man "Spider" (he once ate a tarantula in the jungle) Shepherd goes into jail posing as an armed robber on remand in order to get the goods on super-bad heroin importer Gerry Carpenter, who is also on remand. It's a desperate measure because Carpenter is having all the witnesses against him bumped off. OK, not the most original plot, but I'm initially prepared to give Stephen Leather the benefit of the doubt and see whether he can take us into new territory. And at first we are impressed by the amount of research done on prison arrangements and procedures, and we get a powerful impression of what it's like to be in a Category A, ie high security, prison. But, oh dear, everything you would then expect to happen er. . . happens. Spider's cover is blown, his son is kidnapped, and he is forced to engineer a prison break with the nasty Carpenter in tow, and with the help of. . . you guessed it, the SAS. So what began quite promisingly ends up in a morass of fantastical, and absurd tough-guy codswallop. Leather has done very much better in the past.

5 out of 5 stars

Riveting August 3, 2006
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

This is typical Stephen Leather. Fast, well written, absorbing plot and difficult to put down! Even my wife, who is not a great reader couldn't resist this one! Thoroughly recommended as are all his other novels.