I have loved all Stephen Leather's books about ex special forces guys as well as standalones like The China Man, The fireman etc, This book was a let down compared to other books I've read of his. Stephen is my favourite author there is not one word wasted usually but this book was not his usual standard. There was too much about growing cannabis, the business of it and I did not find the story to be believable. Very disappointing.

Gripped read and full of action!
A Navy SEAL has gone rogue, selling his skills to the highest bidder as a professional assassin. Ryan French no longer cares who he kills so long as the price is right. 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. Plus he's worked with French in the past. It's not a mission he wants, but Standing made a bad choice in his past and it has come back to haunt him. Now he's hunting French in the lawless Wild West forests of Humboldt County, where the US produces most of its legal - and illegal - cannabis.

But 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.

Ryan French is an assassin for hire. If the price is right he’ll take out anyone you want. He’s an ex US navy seal gone rogue. He is an embarrassment to his country and they want him put down, permanently.
Matt Standing is a SAS soldier with quite a reputation and a former friend of Ryan’s, so when he gets an ultimatum to take French out or go to prison for a crime he did and thought no one knew about, he is left with no choice. Standing flies to Humbolt County, a lawless town in the US, a place with cannabis farms run by Russian mobsters and Mexican cartels, a town where strangers are not welcome.
Matt will have to be at his best to find and kill his quarry whilst doing his best to avoid unwanted attention.
No one writes this type of thriller better than Stephen Leather. It’s faced-paced, hard hitting and totally enthralling.
The plot is superb and the main character is fantastic and Leather’s writing is highly addictive.
Another outstanding book by a brilliant writer and one I highly recommend.

I am a huge fan of Mr Leather's Dan "Spider" Shepherd series and although I haven't read the first in this series (how the heck did I miss that!!!!), I was pretty sure I was in for a treat and I wasn't wrong.

Matt "Lastman" Standing is being blackmailed to do a job for "The Pool", a shady organisation; his mission is to hunt down and assassinate Ryan French, an ex-Navy Seal who hires himself out to the highest bidder. This is not going to be an easy mission and Matt finds himself in the depths of the wilderness in western America knee deep in cannabis and up to his neck in trouble within a very short period of time.

With excellent and strong characters, an immersive plot and full of action, this is a great story. I also learnt a heck of a lot about cannabis farming - not that it'll do me much good but it was interesting nonetheless.

I very much look forward to reading more in this series and my thanks must go to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for my copy in return for an honest, unbiased and unedited review.

Stephen Leather’s latest book, was a real scorcher and I could not put it down until the final paragraph. He has written many books apart from this series but there is a freshness about his writing which makes it truly exceptional and I was gripped until the final page.

A Navy SEAL has gone rogue, selling his skills to the highest bidder as a professional assassin. Ryan French no longer cares who he kills so long as the price is right. 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. Plus he's worked with Ryan French in the past. It's not a mission he wants, but Standing made a bad choice in his past and it has come back to haunt him. Now he's hunting French in the lawless Wild West forests of Humboldt County, where the US produces most of its legal - and illegal - cannabis.

But 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.

Stephen Leather is from a journalistic background and meticulously researches the background to all his books and for this one he spent time in California with a guided tour of the whole process of bringing cannabis to market. He intended returning to continue his research but the Covid disease travel restrictions prevented this.

It is very reassuring, reading facts and background details in his stories and knowing that they must be authentic because he has such a good reputation. The quality of his research is undiminished regardless of the quantity of books he writes.

I thought this was a cracking good thriller, the best that I have ever read by Stephen Leather and his journalistic keen attention to detail kept me gripped to the edge of my seat right up to the last page.

Since he has started writing four books a year (incredibly I think, this is his seventy fourth) I was sure the quality would fall off, but this book kept me guessing (wrongly!) right up to the last page. As this is in a series for regular readers, part of the enjoyment comes from catching up on the escapades of the regular characters in a similar way one does to a TV series, but Leather is aware that a reader may buy his book on impulse and the story is fully explained for such occasional readers also. I found the book extremely readable and would certainly recommend it.

When you are in a bit of a reading funk you know Stephen Leather is always a safe bet and this book did not disappoint at all!

This is the second instalment in the Matt Standing series. I haven't read the 1st one and fortunately, I didn't miss anything.

First off I have to say I learned a lot about cannabis farming and smoking weed in this book! 🤣
Matt is being blackmailed in doing a job for The Pool. An ex-navy seal has gone over to the dark side and the Americans want to get rid of him. They approached the British to help and because Matt knows the guy he is being tasked with the job of finding and eliminating him. Not such an easy job. To do this he must travel to Humboldt county where a finds a job on an illegal cannabis farm. But Matt Standing is the type who attracts trouble and soon he is knee-deep in it. Will he be able to execute and is it all as it seems?

A fast paced read that I can highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Standing alone by Stephen Leather.
Matt Standing Thrillers Book 2.
A Navy SEAL has gone rogue, selling his skills to the highest bidder as a professional assassin. Ryan French no longer cares who he kills so long as the price is right. 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.
I enjoyed this book. Great story and characters. 4*.

A new series for me from Stephen Leather and it’s just as good as the Spider Shepherd series.
Matt Standing is hired by Charlotte Button to kill a rogue Navy Seal, Ryan French.
Matt knows him from when they served together in Syria but Button is blackmailing him, so he has no choice but to find him and kill him.
Matt ends up working on a cannabis farm and becomes friends with Brett who owns it.
Trouble is never too far away and soon Matt is fighting with the locals and then the Russian mafia.
This is an action packed thriller that definitely had me hooked.
A brilliant book that I highly recommend.
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Standing alone
Loved this book a page Turner from beginning to end Matt Standing an SAS trouper gets blackmailed to become an assassin in America. It resembles a spider shepherd story without it being one. Class

Standing Alone is the latest non Spider Shepherd action thriller from Stephen Leather and it is another full on, page turning, high on action book that keeps the pages turning from the beginning to the end.

Another one for fans of action thrillers.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the advanced reading copy.
I always enjoy a Stephen Leather novel and this was no exception. The characters are great, the scene setting and description may be 1% too detailed but that is personal taste.
Loved this book, there is no need for me to repeat the synopsis as other reviewers have done that.
Do yourself a favour this winter .....get yourself around a Stephen Leather novel and enjoy.

I received this book from Hodder & Stoughton via Netgalley for a review. Another action packed novel from Stephen Leather. Loved it, highly recommended.

First read by the author and this was a superbly written immersive novel. Plenty of action, realism and adventure from the outset with Matt Standing battling terrorists on home soil before heading unexpectedly and involuntarily to the states to fulfil a dangerous mission that will test all of his physical skills and morals to the limit.

One of Britain’s top thriller writers knocks it out of the park. Again.
This is not one of his Spider Shepherd books, but is set in the same “world” with some familiar characters. Matt Standing is a talented SAS Trooper, an instinctive warrior who sometimes does himself no favours. Compelled to take on a side mission for a mysterious group supported by the Government and headed up by Charlotte Button, he finds himself heading for Humboldt County in California. His mission? To kill an ex- Navy SEAL who has apparently gone rogue. A man with similar to Standing himself.
Now, Stephen Leather doesn’t just write page turners, he puts thought and research into his books and characters. Humboldt County is where “legal” cannabis is grown, and is about as wild and lawless as you can get in the US. Where the hippies once grew a few weeds we now have organised gangs and an area where there is money to be made but lives don’t matter. The author provides a lot of fascinating fleshed out detail.
Much as he is a warrior, Standing is not trained as an agent so he does blunder around a bit trying to track down his target and I liked the way he wasn’t the ‘finished’ article. It made his actions more believable. Even Standing isn’t prepared for the violence and death that will stand between him and his target.
Thoughtful premise, great characters and lots of action. Of course it’s good, it’s Stephen Leather!

I have probably read every one of Stephen Leather books and this is right up there with the best.
Looking forward to more Matt Standing adventures.

If you have read anything by Stephen Leather, then you know you will be getting a really good read. Standing Alone is no different.

We have a familiar main character type, although this time a serving SAS trooper. Ms Button should be well known and there is a passing nod to Dan "Spider" Shepherd, but otherwise this is a Stand(-ing) alone book (pun very much intended), that also feels like it could be the start of a new series.

The timing when Standing is on-site, so to speak, seems quite compressed, but other than that, a really believable, well written action novel that has a solid believable core to it. I read it in one session and loved it.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for this ARC.

Having enjoyed many of this authors books in his Spider Shepherd series I was pleased to be approved to read the second book featuring Matt Standing. Did I enjoy this book - yes, although I felt the first book was better. I thought the book started off well and Matt is sent to find and kill someone he once knew. I felt the book was overly long though, especially in the first half - and at times the writing was overly descriptive and I found myself losing concentration, interest in the story and skimmed through some parts of the story. The writing and action did pick up though in the latter part of the book and it raced to a satisfying and final conclusion. I would read the next book in this series to see how the main character develops, and overall I thought this was an ok read, just one that didn’t wow me or have me desperate to keep turning the pages to find out what was coming next.

I've never read a bad novel by Stephen Leather, nor even a mediocre one.
It always amazes me how he has managed to produce work that is so diverse yet also consistently excellent for so long.
Standing Alone is no exception.
Even though it is a format that has been done before (Although to be fair to Mr Leather, with his Dan 'Spider' Shepherd novels, he was almost certainly among the first to do it) every book has a fresh, exciting feel but one that by now, you can trust to deliver, every single time.
We've met Matt 'Lastman' Standing before. I suspect because Spider is getting on a bit so we need a new hero and this book really brings his character on and gives him depth.
I love him already.
Gripping through to the end where even the final page made me grin, Standing Alone is a worthy addition to an amazing catalogue of work.
I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms already.

An9other scorching thriller from Stephen Leather.

Matt Standong, a serving special ops soldier, is recruited to prevent a former soldier turned assassin from embarrassing British interests. This leads him on a hunt in the wilds to try yo find the rogue.

As is usual with Stephen Leather stories, the book is thoughtful and detailed, but the action explosive.

I always enjoy his books and this one is also enjoyable and satisfying.

Recommended.