Shadow Force - a blazing new thriller (From The Northern Echo)

Shadow Force - a blazing new thriller

6:24pm Monday 4th April 2011 in Books By Nigel Burton

IF you're a fan of modern military thrillers you're going to have fun with anything Matt Lynn writes.

Having decided to strike out on his own after years ghost writing for soldiers-turned-authors, he's on something of a roll.

His first two highly successful books, Death Force and Fire Force, laid the ground rules for his third adventure, Shadow Force.

All the usual tropes are present and correct: a band of misunderstood mercenaries, double-dealing spooks, bloodthirsty terrorists, lots of military fetishism, a treasure of enormous value and an 11th hour sacrifice.

Fans will feel instantly at home, but newcomers need have no qualms - the characters are so well drawn there's no steep learning curve should you have missed the first two books.

Given their propensity for kidnap and extortion, I'm surprised no one has used Somali pirates as the bad guys before.

Strap yourself in for a thrill ride

The Shadow Force of the title is a band of ex-special forces mercenaries that's put together by MI6.

The main core of the team are the members of Death Inc, the heroes-for-hire who fought alongside each other in the first two books. This time they are joined by a new member, a Frenchman who instantly stirs up memories of agincourt with his abrasive personality - behaviour that threatens to disrupt the smooth running of the unit.

MI6 recruits the team for a suicide mission to capture Somalia's biggest pirate leader and confiscate his ill-gotten gains. But nothing is as it seems in the world of international espionage. The pirates may be the least of the group's worries.

After all, there's nothing more expendable than a group of soldiers who don't officially exist.

Shadow Force doesn't pretend to be anything more than a rollicking good adventure. There's nothing to slow it down and, if the plot does throttle back sometimes, you can be sure there's always another gunfight a couple of page turns away.

If it were a movie, Shadow Force would be a tight 90 minutes - all action with no time for boring exposition. It would undoubtedly be a guilty pleasure.

I'm not ashamed to say that I read Shadow Force in one sitting - starting at 6pm I couldn't put it down until the last page shortly after midnight.

If you're familiar with the genre you might recognise the story arc from another thriller by a big name - a clue, no doubt, to Matt Lynn's previous life as a ghost writer - but the similarity didn't detract from my enjoyment.

And, having taken his team through Afghanistan, the fictional African nation of Batota and Somalia, Matt is planning a change of locale for the fourth Death Inc thriller. As you'll guess from the title, Ice Force is set in somewhat chillier climes.

I, for one, can't wait for the shooting to start.

Strap yourself in for a thrill ride, Shadow Force is a savage military adventure that's ripped straight from today's front page headlines.

Shadow Force is published by Headline and has an RRP of £7.99