Review: Four short stories and six peeks at full novels.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 13, 2012
If you read the product description (which I did not evidently), you will understand that this eBook offering has four short stories and then the first few chapters in six of Stephen Leather's novels.  Somehow I missed the "first chapters included" information and went right to "short stories".  Therefore I was rather startled when I came to the lead-in to The Bombmaker and understood I would only be getting a whetting of my appetite.  In the end it all turned out fine.I particularly liked two of the short stories, Breaking In and Strangers on a Train.  These were filled with suspense and offered just enough plot to give me a glimpse of the characters and to make me wish they had been much longer.  Inspector Zhang and the Hotel Guest was quite short and slow paced with the Inspector demonstrating his deductive skills, a la Sherlock Holmes.  The final short story, Cat's Eyes didn't do much for me.The six introductory chapter books are The Bombmaker, The Long Shot, The Double Tap, The Birthday Girl, Hungry Ghost, and The Vets.  All of these provide just enough teasing to let the reader know which stories would be worth seeking out to read in full.  There are also some comments from Leather as introductions for each novel sample.  The novels are definitely of the thriller/action adventure genres.  All in all, this was a really good way to check out the writing and character styles for Mr Leather and get you on the hunt for these novels.