coolreads# Standing Alone @definitelybooks

Standing Alone
Author: Stephen Leather
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781529367508

A Navy SEAL Ryan French has gone rogue, selling his skills to the highest bidder as a professional assassin. He no longer cares who he kills so long as the price is right.

Unfortunately for him, his former bosses want him taken down, but they’re not prepared to get their hands dirty. So they need a Brit to do the job.

SAS trooper Matt “Lastman” Standing is a lethal killing machine with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The reason he is chosen for this assignment is because he has worked with French in the past. It’s not a mission he wants, but Standing has made a bad decision in his past and it has now come back to haunt him. He had taken out the man who had killed his sister together with his handler, a CIA agent.

His new employer is Charlotte Button, who heads The Pool, a shady organisation that carries out covert operations for the British government in and out of the country. And she is not mincing her words or intention when she tells Standing that she knows about his past secret and how he did it.

Caught in a dilemma, Standing has no choice but to agree to do her bidding - to kill French, who had served together with him in Syria.

Taking some time off to handle this mission, Standing finds himself in the lawless Wild West forests of Humboldt County, where he is told that French is last spotted when he made a call from a public phone near there. This is the place where the US produces most of its legal as well as illegal cannabis and where many unsuspecting labourers, especially young girls, who come to work at the cannabis farms "disappear" after a while. 

Standing learns about their plight after meeting a mother of one missing girl who is looking for her daughter in Alderpoint, a tiny village nestled in the Eel River.

He soon learns that the missing girl, Emma Mackenzie, works as a trimmigrant, a local term for a trimmer immigrant who helps with the cannabis harvest.

During an encounter with some Russian mafia at a restaurant, Standing meets his rescuer and new friend as well as cannabis farm employer, Brett Mullican, also a former Navy SEAL.

Apparently, French isn’t the only predator in the wilderness – there are Mexican cartels, Russian mafia and Hungarian gangsters – and Standing has to overcome them all to get to his target.

In an uncanny plot style, events at the cannabis farms are tied up nicely in the end where Standing manages to locate Emma together with two other girls being held as prisoners in a farm run by the Russian Mafia. He also tracks down French at this farm.

In this second instalment in the Matt Standing series, Standing Alone, Leather has written an action-packed thrill ride that sees the talented SAS trooper Standing being blackmailed into taking a side mission for Button that sees him hunting down French in rural California where organised crime is rife, people live wild and free, and cannabis grows in abundance.

The writing is brisk and tight. The characters are ruthless, persistent, and experienced. And the plot keeps you on the edge of your seat as it submerges you in a menacing tale full of violence, deception, mayhem, danger, power, and murder.

Overall, this thriller is another  exciting tale by Leather with its well-drawn characterisation, creative storyline, and thrilling conclusion, and is sure to be a big hit with his fans.