Stephen Leather has one-upped himself (a tremendous feat) with one of the most ingeniously captivating and timely action thrillers pertaining to the most recent shift of geopolitical climate in the Middle East.

Leather’s first novel entitled Pay Off was written while he was an employee at The Daily Mirror. The novels that Leather wrote while he was a journalist are usually centered in the location in which he was working in at the time.

After spending hours writing the manuscript at his office typewriter, Leather submitted it on a whim to publisher Harper Collins. The novel was discovered on the “slush pile” at Harper Collins. Essentially, the slush pile is a collection of every manuscript a publishing company has and the copies can be read by anyone from the CEO to a secretary. After college, Leather is employed at the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) as a biochemist. While employed at ICI, Leather was exposed to chemicals, incidents and stories that became the plot lines for many of his books. In addition to working as a biochemist, Leather has worked in a quarry, been a baker, a barman and employed as a petrol pump attendant. Leather was born in Manchester, England and attended Manchester Grammar School before graduating from Bath University. Contrary to many other writers and journalists who studied writing or communication, Leather graduated from Bath University with a BSc in Biochemistry.

Since that decision, Leather has gone on to write more twenty novels that have sold millions and millions of copies worldwide. In 2002, Leather’s novel Tango One received the first ever CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. Sponsored by the estate of Ian Fleming , this award recognizes the best adventure novel that embodies the spirit and themes represent by James Bond. After completing a mishmash of jobs, Leather decided to pursue a writing career as a journalist. His career in the journalism industry exposed Leather to many different countries and international incidents. Leather has worked for a variety of newspapers including Glasgow Herald, Daily Mirror, The Times, Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post where he lived in Hong Kong.

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Leather was able to drive sales by pricing his books at the lowest possible price to attract buyers and surge his novels into the top ten list of most popular eBooks. When not writing novels, Leather can be found writing screenplays for popular television shows. As with all his earlier works in this series, Leather writes with short, punchy prose with “bang up to date” elegance. Easy to read, nothing extraneous – just relax and let the story unfold around you. So easy to feel you are actually there with the characters.

For example, The Fireman, published in 1990 was told from the perspective of a British tabloid journalist who went to Hong Kong to investigate the suspicious suicide of his sister. After working as a journalist for more than 10 years, Leather chose to step away from his career to pursue fiction writing full time. Consequently, the chances of a manuscript being read by a person with authority is slim to none; however, Leather’s book fell into the right hands and within four months he was a published author. Telling the story of a wealthy Scottish financier, the protagonist risks his career, family and lover by setting up a drug deal with the IRA. Why risk everything for a drug deal? Revenge for a brutal and unnecessary murder. Dirty War stars Stephen Leather’s distinctive hero, Dan “Spider” Shepherd as he uncovers a major terrorist plot to assassinate the Prime Minister of United Kingdom. This time, the threat’s personal to Spider; he’s the one who got the terrorist into the country in the first place. Generally each of Leather’s novels are set in London, Europe or Asia. While many of his novels are written as stand alone books, Leather has penned several series that chronicle the adventure’s of a single protagonist. In Leather’s popular “Spider” series of books, he follows Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd a former British Special Air Service soldier who has become an undercover police officer.