Slingshot: A Spycatcher Novel

Matthew Dunn uses his experience as a former MI6 field officer to bring transfixing realism to Slingshot, his third Spycatcher novel featuring Will Cochrane—MI6’s, and now the CIA’s, most prized asset and deadliest weapon.
 
In Slingshot, Cochrane is ordered to recover a mysterious document stolen by a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SRV) traitor working for a former high-ranking East German Stasi officer. The officer, years before, had instigated a secret pact between Russian and U.S. generals. The agreement stipulated that should it be broken, an assassin would immediately be set loose after an unknown target.
 
The SRV has sent their own version of Cochrane, a cold-blooded, brilliant operative, to retrieve the document, pitting spycatcher against spycatcher.
 
Slingshot, with its cat-and-mouse espionage, brutal action, and complex protagonist, is a must-read for fans of Robert Ludlum and Lee Child.

On the streets of Gdansk, Poland, Will Cochrane waits for a Russian defector bearing a top-secret document. But when the target shows up, so does a team from the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR. Then, in a hail of crossfire, a van speeds into the melee and snatches the defector out from under them all. Everyone wants the man and the codes he carries—but now he's gone, and it's up to Will and his CIA /MI6 team to find him before the Russians do.

Tracking the missing Russian and his kidnappers, Will believes the defector has his own agenda. But soon it's apparent that the real perpetrator is a former East German Stasi officer who instigated a super-secret pact between Russian and U.S. generals almost twenty years ago. An agreement, which if broken, is designed to unleash the world's deadliest assassin.

And when the Russians task their own "spycatcher" to retrieve the document, Will must face two very clever, deadly adversaries who will stop at nothing to achieve their aims.

“[Dunn] has created a plot with plenty of action and lots of twists and turns . . . nonstop action and relentless danger.” - Associated Press on Spycatcher

“Spycatcher is a nail-biting, edge of your seat page-turner. And Matthew Dunn is an explosive new talent.” - Simon Kernick, #1 bestselling author of Relentless (UK)

“Dunn’s exuberant, bullet-drenched prose, with its descriptions of intelligence tradecraft and modern anti-terrorism campaigns, bristles with authenticity. . . . True to form, Cochrane is riven with demons. A graduate of Cambridge University, he is feared by friend and foe alike, [and] burdened with more angst and less panache than James Bond. . . .Save for works by Alan Furst, good thrillers have been thin on the ground of late. Mr. Dunn has redressed this balance with an altogether gripping book.” - The Economist

“Slingshot is anything but a paint-by-number spy thriller. Matthew Dunn’s third Will Cochrane novel is a complex work with a twisting and turning plot that moves ever forward, loaded with the double—and triple—crosses that readers who follow the author have come to expect. . . . should be added to the must-read lists of all fans of espionage thrillers.” - Bookreporter.com

“Excellent. . . . I know of no other spy thriller that so successfully blends the fascinating nuances of the business of espionage and intelligence work with full-throttle suspense storytelling.” - Jeffery Deaver, author of Carte Blanche

“Move over, James Bond, Alex Hawke [and] Mitch Rapp . . . Matthew Dunn has come in from the cold with big guns, a killer attitude and realism that other writers only dream about.” - Clarion-Ledger

“Dunn is a gifted storyteller.” - Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Spycatcher

“Dunn delivers insights into a world most of us will never experience—except between the covers of a book, or maybe someday in a movie as good as the best of the Bond and Bourne sagas.” - Oakland Tribune on Sentinel

“Dunn joins the fraternity of the old school writers, Le Carre, Fleming, Deighton, by entering the class that includes Dan Fesperman, Alan Furst and Charles Cumming. He’s a welcome addition.” - Mystery One

“Dunn, a former M16 officer, fashions a Nietzschean hero who looks poised to give Lee Child’s Jack Reacher a run for his readers . . . . Cochrane is a powerful, efficient killing machine, but his menace is leavened by some warm and appealing traits . . . . This is [a] twisty, cleverly crafted work.” - Kirkus Reviews on SPYCATCHER

“Spycatcher is a terrific thriller with a superb new hero in superspy, Will Cochrane. Written with confidence by a man with the credentials to back him up, Spycatcher oozes class. Bond and Bourne can take a back seat: Spartan is now on the case.” - Matt Hilton

“A real spy proves he is a real writer-and a truly deft and inventive one. Spycatcher is a stunning debut.” - Ted Bell, New York Times bestselling author of Hawke, Assassin, and Pirate