Skinned alive

“For Valour” is the citation on Britain’s highest military honour, the Victoria Cross.

It is a fitting title for Andy McNab’s latest novel as his hero, Nick Stone, is thrown into the deep end of trying to unravel series of killings which, it quickly becomes clear, surround the posthumous award of the first VC to be made in decades.

It starts when a young trooper is shot in the head in an SAS training facility.

The son of a friend from Nick’s SAS days is blamed and charged with manslaughter and refuses to defend himself – even though it emerges he was nowhere near the facility when the shot was fired.

A call by an old comrade to investigate the mystery ends on a Welsh mountain when a sniper’s bullet kills his contact.

It is obvious that Nick will be next in the assassin’s sights and he runs for cover and to enlist the help of a catholic priest who is familiar with the soul searching that makes up soldiers’ confessions.

Soon it becomes apparent that Serbian mercenaries are being employed to cover up a secret that could destroy the name of a former Regimental commander who has left the SAS under a cloud.

With the Serbs seemingly anticipating his every move Nick ends up in Southern Spain to discover a third force is acting as his guardian angels, saving him, albeit roughly, from himself and those hunting him.

Managing to obtain a clandestine interview with the jailed accused, Nick finds the soldier has been traumatised by the screams of a friend being skinned alive by the Taliban.

Andy McNab uses the experience he gained in 17 years in the British Army (including nine in the famed SAS) to bring reality to his fast-paced Nick Stone series of novels.