The Great Satan (Shadow Squadron) [Paperback]

'THE GREAT SATAN is just that - GREAT! David Black's plot is brilliant, well thought out and very gripping.      ' Sean Rayment - Defence/Security Correspondent - The Sunday Telegraph

'It all reads as authentic, page-turning stuff. Let's hope no one mistakes it for an instruction manual.' Jeremy Clarke - 'Low Life Columnist, The Spectator

‘Pat Farrell - Part time taxi driver, part time SAS soldier - is a true hero for our times.' Robert Jobson, News of the World

‘From traffic jams to behind enemy lines...’ Ross Lydall, London Evening Standard

In the bitterly divisive aftermath of the Iraq War, the former political leaders of the UK and USA are condemned as deceitful and mendacious, allegedly fabricating excuses for their martial actions. In The Great Satan, the first of his compelling new Shadow Squadron series, author David Black takes their rationale to its logical conclusion to produce his own fictional nightmare scenario: What if the Iraqi weapons that were said to be dismantled in the late 1990s included the ultimate WMD? And what if the deposing of Saddam Hussein left one of his most ruthless military leaders at large, actively seeking revenge? . . . In The Great Satan, author Black and his main character - Special Forces team leader Pat Farrell - are so close as to be synonymous, both having worked as London taxi drivers during a tenure as Territorial SAS members, ready to be called into action in time of national emergency. The principal difference is that the author is now retired from the forces, while his fictional counterpart is left to contend with 'the real world . . . with direct relevance to the grisly global horrors being perpetrated today.' In The Great Satan, the current world situation meets the page-turning action prose of pulp fiction. The central antagonist is General Jamal Al-Mahdi, veteran of Saddam s campaign against the Kurds, who transports the ultimate hidden WMD to the UK the nuclear bomb that is the greatest Satan of all, awaiting deployment by a young British jihadi at a point where we can only hope fiction diverges entirely from fact . . .

THE GREAT SATAN is the first of the new Shadow Squadron series. Dealing with the dangerous activities of the little-known 'Two Troop' - 21st SAS Squadron - it combines world affairs with fast-moving action in the tradition of Gerald Seymour/BBC1's Spooks. 'I was a part-time SAS Special Forces soldier leading exactly this kind of double life,' says David Black. The author's background will be the subject of press comment by fiction reviewers and defence correspondents.