If you like to lose yourself in a strapping yarn that is well told then this book - another outstanding adventure from one of the world's best loved storytellers - is for you. The challenge facing established authors such as Wilbur Smith in this, by our reckoning, his thirty-second book (his first, 'When The Lion Feeds', having been published in 1964), is how to stay fresh and relevant in today's world. In the same way as John le Carre made his name through stories set in a Cold War that no longer exists, so Wilbur Smith has had to move on from his early African settings. The world has changed.
Thus, we can believe that an author with such an extensive canon behind him and in his fifth decade of writing can develop characters and carry a story. But is the context relevant? Does the story represent the modern world in which it is set? Is the reader interested?
In this case, the answer has to be 'yes'. Our news media tells us that piracy is prevalent off coastlines such as Somalia, we know that these coastlines 'belong' to countries whose cultures, and behavioural values, are different from ours - and now we know that the elderly Wilbur Smith can weave such modern technology as a Blackberry into his tale!
THE FIRST IN THE GRIPPING ACTION-PACKED HECTOR CROSS SERIES, FROM WILBUR SMITH. PERFECT FOR FANS OF BOURNE AND LEE CHILD'S JACK REACHER SERIES.Some debts can only be paid in blood . . .When Hazel Bannock, billionaire oil tycoon, discovers her daughter has been kidnapped by Al Qaeda pirates just off the coast of Somalia, she uses all the power at her disposal to rescue her daughter - but politics and diplomacy fail her at every turn.Her only hope is Hector Cross, an expert in surveillance, infiltration and combat. For all Hazel's connections and wealth, Cross is the one man who is offering to find her daughter. Hazel and Cross must work together to bring Cayla home, but neither of them realises that the kidnappers are not merely interested in ransom - what they have planned is far, far worse . . .The first Hector Cross thriller. Book 2 in the series, Vicious Circle, is out now in paperback and ebook.REVIEWS'Those in Peril has much to recommend it . . . if you like your action plain, graphic and simple yet never entirely predictable, Smith will satisfy' - Sunday Express
Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written nearly thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His books are now translated into twenty-six languages.
Wilbur Smith lives in London and continues to have an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.
