Nick Stone Series by Andy McNab
Nick Stone #1
Remote Control ns-1
Andy McNab
A rogue Special Air Service agent on the lam in suburban America with the seven-year-old daughter of a murdered colleague. Sounds like the latest Bruce Willis vehicle, costarring that little girl from the Pepsi commercials. But McNab, a former SAS agent himself and author of two nonfiction books on the subject, manages to balance the clich?s and cuteness with large doses of tradecraft taken from his 17 years of undercover experience. When Nick Stone describes how to maintain a fictitious address or reveals the secrets of tracing a call made from a public telephone, the details ring trueAand help get us over some of the more ludicrous speed bumps in his story. Stone, tracking two Irish terrorists from London to Washington, is suddenly ordered back home on the next available flight. His old mate Kevin Brown, now with the Drug Enforcement Agency, lives nearby, so Nick decides to drop in. He finds a slaughterhouse: Kev, his wife, and youngest daughter have been murdered, but daughter Kelly has survived in a special hideout. Prying information from the shocked child, Stone links the killers to either the CIA, the DEA or his own organization Awhich means that he and Kelly are on the run from everybody. As Nick trundles the spunky youngster from one seedy motel to another, stuffs her with junk food and teaches her the rudiments of espionage, he puts together a picture of why Kevin and his family were killedAa connection between a terrorist bomb scare in Gibraltar in 1988, the Colombian drug cartel and high-level intelligence agency skullduggery. The vast network of sinister collaborations isn't startling, but McNab reliably delivers the believable, real-life details and keeps readers' attention with steady, careful prose until the predictable but satisfying end. (June) FYI: Remote Control was the number one bestseller in London's Sunday Times for seven weeks. Because of McNab's SAS involvement, and his wanted status by several terrorist groups, he makes no public appearances.
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Nick Stone #2
Crisis Four ns-2
Andy McNab
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and a little knowledge is all freelance operative Nick Stone gets when he's ordered to track down a missing colleague in McNab's gripping follow-up to the British bestseller Remote Control. It's the spring of 1998, and Stone is on the trail of Sarah Greenwood, who's disappeared from her counter-terrorism stint in Washington just before Arafat and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet with President Clinton in the capital. It doesn't help that Stone's affair with Sarah (which was all business on Sarah's part) was responsible for the end of his marriage, or that Sarah herself is a real piece of work. When Stone finds Sarah, he discovers that his superiors not only want the trigger-happy operative dead, they want her to disappear without a trace. But Sarah claims she has information that could stop an Osama Bin Laden-sponsored terrorist strike on the White House that would kill the American, Palestinian and Israeli leaders. As a result, Stone must choose whether to obey orders or to believe his ex-lover. The plot is simple and direct, and McNab's talent for setting up a scene becomes evident when Stone tracks Sarah to North Carolina. His stakeout of her house would occupy a few pages if described by a less-skilled writer, but McNab goes deep into detail, transforming the set piece into virtual reality. McNab, a former Special Air Service member, delivers authenticity in spades; this thriller is full of the kind of grit that gets under the fingernails. His nonfiction bestseller, Bravo Two Zero, which tells the story of what happened to his SAS patrol when it was stranded behind Iraqi lines during the Gulf War, reads like a prologue to this novel, which boasts the operational details of a Rogue Warrior escapade without the overdose of testosterone.
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Nick Stone #3
FireWall ns-3
Andy McNab
Helsinki, December 1999. Nick Stone, ex-SAS, now a 'K' working for British Intelligence on deniable operations, is tough, resourceful, ruthless, highly trained - and desperately in need of cash...
Offered the lucrative freelance job of kidnapping a mafia warlord and delivering him to St Petersburg, it seems to Stone that his problems are over. In fact, they are only just beginning.
Stone enters the bleak underworld of the former Soviet republic of Estonia, where unknown aggressors stalk the Arctic landscape, and he soon finds himself caught between implacable enemies. For Russia has embarked upon a concerted cyber-espionage offensive, hacking into some of the West's most sensitive military secrets. American and British intelligence agencies are determined to thwart them. And the mafia are waiting in the wings with their own chillingly brutal solution...
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Nick Stone #4
Last Light ns-4
Andy McNab
Former British special services agent Nick Stone, now a freelancer, never fails to come through. This time, though, as he's manning the controls for a sanctioned, three-sniper assassination at a Houses of Parliament function, he chokes. Seems that his target is a boy, and his human side causes him to abort the operation. This doesn't sit well with his bosses, of course, and Nick figures he will be their next victim. But his life is spared on one condition: he must carry out the original assignment on his own. His punishment if he fails again is certain death, but even more excruciating is the bosses' threat to kill Kelly, the 13-year-old for whom Nick acts as guardian and who witnessed her family's execution in McNab's first novel, Remote Control (1999). The target is the son of a Chinese businessman with apparent ties to Colombian guerrillas, and as Nick gets closer to grasping the plot that led a legitimate government to hire an assassin, he becomes the hunted as well as the hunter. While traipsing through Central American jungles (leading to a climactic scene at the Panama Canal), Nick is haunted by the image of Kelly being in danger, motivating him to make some tough, life-altering choices. An exciting story line, believable dialogue, and a flawed but honorable hero converge in what is clearly the best Nick Stone adventure yet.
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Nick Stone #5
Liberation Day ns-5
Andy McNab
Former British SAS agent Nick Stone sets his sights on al-Qaida in his fifth adventure (after Last Light), a search-and-capture mission weighed down by excessive detail and a numbing lack of action. Stone, now working for a special antiterrorist U.S. strike team, is assigned to the south of France to choke off al-Qaida's money line. Stone has taken the job reluctantly. He wants to retire, but the CIA has promised him U.S. citizenship and a new life with the woman he loves if he completes the task. On arrival in Cannes, Stone hooks up with two Egyptian sidekicks, and the trio begin tracking down the so-called hawalla, the secret network of underground bankers who finance terrorist operations and compensate the families of those who die in the cause. Specifically, Stone's job is to kidnap three of the bankers and whisk them to a U.S. warship just off the French coast, where they will be interrogated and forced to reveal the origin and destination of their money. As is his custom, Stone takes the beating of his life, but perseveres in the face of overwhelming odds. McNab, a British special forces member for more than a decade, is at his best when the action gets hairy, as it finally does toward the end. Too much of his latest, however, is spent following Stone through the mundane details of mission preparation-staking out locations, following suspects, ruminating about possible scenarios. Instead of biting their nails, readers will be staring at them absently, bored by the colorless plot.
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Nick Stone #6
Dark Winter ns-6
Andy McNab
Andy McNab's thrillers have been enormously successful, and Dark Winter will no doubt allow his publishers to add more noughts to his already impressive sales figures. McNab's secret is reliability. He always delivers the kind of high-octane thrills his readers expect and seems immune to the hit-or-miss syndrome that afflicts so many thriller writers. Dark Winter has the tough (and battered) Nick Stone back in business, still parleying the skills he learnt in the SAS into his new role as a Special Intelligence Service operative. Al-Qaeda are concentrating their forces in south-east Asia (McNab is as topical as ever), and Nick is sent by the CIA to deal with one of Osama bin Laden's most dangerous biochemists. But Nick is given a female partner, and the mission takes unexpected turns. Back in the US, and struggling with the problems of being guardian to an orphaned girl, Nick finds a whole nest of terrorists plotting atrocities in both the US and the UK, and his involvement becomes (against his will) very personal indeed. As always, the mixture here is incandescent, punctuating steadily accelerating narrative trajectory with stunningly orchestrated bursts of action at frequent intervals. McNab's characterisation of anyone other than the resourceful Nick is serviceable rather than detailed, but this is a strategy to ensure that the principal ingredient here--bone-crunching action--is always foregrounded. It may be a while since McNab was an SAS man himself, but the tradecraft is always coolly plausible, and McNab fans can count on getting their money's worth.
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Nick Stone #7
Deep Black ns-7
Andy McNab
A simple quest in Baghdad takes Stone into the heart of a chilling conspiracy; too late, he realizes that he is being used as bait to lure into the open a man he believes can offer some salvation but whom the darker forces of the West will stop at nothing to destroy.
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Nick Stone #8
Aggressor ns-8
Andy McNab
The stunning new thriller from the master of the genre. Nick Stone seems to be living his dream, not a care in the world as he steers his camper van round the surfing and parachuting centres of Australia, a board on the roof, freefall rig behind him, and a beautiful young backpacker at his side. But when he witnesses on TV the massacre of children in a terrorist siege on the other side of the world, long-suppressed memories are triggered and Nick finds himself catapulted once more into working for the American secret services — only this time, of his own free will. As events unfold in the bleak, medieval villages of Azerbajhan, and the teeming streets of modern Istanbul, it isn’t long before Nick discovers the true objective of the mission on which he has embarked. His talents are being misused by those who stalk the corridors of power, and he is determined to make a stand. Hurtled at breakneck pace through a deadly landscape of greed, violence and ever-shifting allegiances, the reader will be left in no doubt that McNab is the master of the genre — and Aggressor is McNab at his searing, blockbusting best.
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Nick Stone #9
Recoil ns-9
Andy McNab
Recuperating in Switzerland after a job that cost the life of one of his closest friends, ex-deniable operator Nick Stone has only two things on his mind: to ask his girlfriend Silky to marry him, and to lead a quieter life.
But when his newfound love disappears, Nick is forced back into action. The trail leads him to Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it isn’t long before the past comes knocking on his door. . .
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Nick Stone #10
Nick Stone #11
Brute Force ns-11
Andy McNab
Nick Stone’s eleventh adventure is McNab at his explosive best!
A cargo ship is apprehended by the authorities off the coast of Spain, loaded to the gunwales with enough arms and ammunition to start a war…
Twenty years later, an unknown aggressor seems intent on eradicating those responsible for the treachery, one by one. And Nick Stone — ex-SAS, tough, resourceful, ruthless, highly trained — is next on the killer’s list…
The fuse is lit… and Stone is catapulted into his most daunting mission yet — a quest that takes him across two continents, and into the darker recesses of his own complex past. But first he must find a man who shared that past, and who may know more about the present threat than he is prepared to reveal.
As the two find themselves pursued across sea and desert, they become ever more enmeshed in a deadly network of betrayal, to which Stone himself unwittingly holds the key. And in a final confrontation that echoes his worst nightmares, only he can stop the unthinkable and save the lives of those he holds most dear.
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Nick Stone #12
Exit wound ns-12
Andy McNab
Three tons of Saddam Hussein's gold in an unguarded warehouse in Dubai…For two of Nick Stone's closest ex-SAS comrades, it was to have been the perfect, victimless crime. But when they're double-crossed and the robbery goes devastatingly wrong, only Stone can identify his friends' killer and track him down…As one harrowing piece of the complex and sinister jigsaw slots into another, Stone's quest for vengeance becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy, to which he and the beautiful Russian investigative journalist with whom he has become ensnared unwittingly hold the key. Ticking like a time-bomb, brimming with terror and threat, Andy McNab's latest Nick Stone adventure is a high-voltage story of corruption, cover-up and blistering suspense – the master thriller writer at his electrifying, unputdownable best.
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Nick Stone #13
Zero Hour (2010) ns-13
Andy McNab
A terrorist group is on the brink of obtaining a code that will jam every item of military hardware from Washington to Kabul. Jets and helicopters will fall from the sky. Communications and weapons systems will fail. The West will be brought to its knees. Only one man can find and stop the perpetrator -- but for the first time in his life Nick Stone doesn't want to play ball.
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Nick Stone #14
Dead Centre ns-14
Andy McNab
Somalia — a lawless, violent land, ignored by the West, ripped apart by civil war and famine, fought over by drug-fuelled, gun-crazy clan fighters. They want the world to sit up and take notice. They have a new and terrifying weapon — pirates. And now, the pirates have in their possession the young son of a Russian oligarch, snatched from a luxury yacht in the Seychelles. His father wants him back, will pay anything, stop at nothing to retrieve his boy. Up to now everything he has tried has failed. He needs the one man with the know-how, the means and the guts to complete the mission: ex-SAS trouble-shooter Nick Stone… Dead Centre takes you to the reality behind the headlines, into the poorest and most violent country on the planet, a place that no sane person would choose to be. Andy McNab has been there, seen it, done it. No other thriller writer can take you so close to the action.
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