Hard Landing
Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, undercover detective and all-round hardpan, faces his toughest assignment yet as he infiltrates a top security prison, endangering not just himself but his family as well. The author has clearly enjoyed himself cranking up the moral ambivalence of the prison officers, making the lifers with nothing to lose even more hard-edged than is strictly necessary, and ensuring that the brutalising and dehumanising prison environment resembles a factory for manufacturing evil. Not perhaps the most original of plots, but prison life is as topical as ever and prison drama plays well, whether on the small screen or the printed page. Plus the author has form, so to speak, having written not just highly successful novels but also episodes of London's Burning and The Knock.