Greed

Chris Ryan

Five Men. One Robbery. A deadly game of greed, revenge and betrayal is about to begin.

Fresh out of the SAS, Matt Browning is down on his luck. He owes £500,000. If he doesn't get the money soon, he dies. From nowhere, he is offered a lifeline. A hit on al-Queda, sanctioned and helped by MI5. Matt gathers a small team of former SAS men to steal $10 million in gold and diamonds from the world's most deadly terrorist organisation. MI5 will give them all the equipment and information they need. No charges will ever be pressed. Matt thinks it's the perfect crime. Safe, quick, and patriotic.

But after the money is stolen, the killing starts. Someone is taking down the members of the team one by one. A silent, expert assassin is stalking the team, gruesomely murdering both them and their families. And Matt knows that he's next.

An explosive story of what happens when terrorism, money, love and jealously combust.

Review by Crystal (200205) Rating (8/10)

Review by Crystal
Matt appears to have an easy life in Marbella, but he has serious money problems that his fiancée, Gill, knows nothing about. He gets a break from MI5, but the mission needs a team of five. Three can be Matt’s choice, but MI5 insist on one other member.

This has its problems from the start, and when the mission is complete, it gets worse. After the first team member and his family are killed they all decide they can trust no one, but if the killer is not one of the team, then how does the killer know them? Where is he getting their addresses? The team go into hiding until another man is killed. Now the killer has to pay, but how do they find him?

The story mainly follows Matt, but you also get to know things from the killer’s viewpoint. This makes things more interesting: where is he? Who lives nearby? Will he succeed in killing them? Some of these sections may disturb some people, as there are quotes from the Koran that have been twisted to justify the killings and there are a couple of references to ‘the glorious events of September the eleventh’.

The pace changes throughout the book, so I did manage to put it down a few times. However, this doesn’t mean the book slows down to boredom. This is the first Chris Ryan book I have read and I liked it enough to read more.
Crystal (20th February 2005)