The SBS was first into battle a month before the SAS in the Falklands War and again in the Gulf War, yet hitherto it is the SAS that has had by far the higher profile. The SBS draws its manpower solely from the Marine Commando Units, and the Royal Marines are the oldest and most battle-honoured regiment in the world. FIRST INTO ACTION is the first Special Boat Services memoir written from the inside. It tells how Duncan Falconer trained with the Royal Marines in Deal before being recruited into the SBS at Poole in Dorset. The regimen of ruthless training is graphically described and the book also includes revelatory accounts of SBS operations in Ulster, Bosnia and the Gulf War, and of the intense rivalry between the SAS's individualist mentality and the more team-based, marine ethos of the SBS. Duncan Falconer's grippingly detailed memoir is sure to command the attention of anyone interested in the Special Forces and how they operate.

In war-torn Iraq, Stratton's closest friend is killed whilst on operation, leaving behind a grieving wife and child - Stratton's godson. When the widow moves to Los Angeles she is brutally murdered and her child placed in state custody. Stratton, rocked to his foundations by the killing, uncovers a FBI plot to hide the crime and sets off on a private operation of revenge that eventually pits him against one of the most powerful East European crime syndicates in America. Hunted by the CIA and FBI as well as a brutal army of Albanian mobsters and armed only with his wits and an extraordinary skill with explosives, Stratton relentlessly pursues his private war; a fight he suspects could be his last. Yet another enjoyable Falconer weave of thrill and action wrapped in the rich authenticity that defined his previous novels, taking the reader on a roller-coaster ride across half the globe to a nail-biting climax.

* NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING DOMINIC COOPER - READ IT BEFORE YOU SEE IT! * THE ENEMY HAS A WEAPON. SO DO WE. Discover the hugely bestselling debut thriller by a former member of the elite Special Boat Services - the toughest men in the world - and his super-weapon hero: Stratton. When an undercover operation monitoring the Real IRA goes horrifically wrong, British Intelligence turn to the one man who can get their agent out: Stratton, SBS operative with a lethal reputation. It's a dangerous race against time: if the Real IRA get to the Republic before Stratton gets to the Real IRA, his colleague is as good as dead. But the battle in the Northern Ireland borders is just the beginning. For there can only be one way the Real IRA knew about the British agent: someone within MI5 is tipping them off. A surveillance mission is mounted in Paris to identify the mole but ends in disaster: Hank Munro, US Navy SEAL on secondment, is captured. Munro's wife Kathryn is distraught, and her priest Father Kinsella is very supportive. Kinsella, though, is not the holy man he seems, and Kathryn becomes an unwitting part of a deadly Real IRA plan, a terror attack the likes of which London has never seen . . . When Hank is inadvertently kidnapped by terrorists on an SBS 'safe op', Kathryn returns home to America, only to be manipulated by a priest and secret IRA godfather into playing a political role in the negotiations for Hank's release. Unknown to her she is to have a key part in the most destructive terrorist assault in Irish Republican history, one that holds the fate of hundreds of thousands of Londoners in its hands. Originally published as The Hostage.

After the British military lose an officer to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, a desperate race begins to find his killers. Little do the assailants know that the precious information they have stolen could bring down the entire network of Western intelligence in the Mid-East. But then one of them is captured by US troops and flown to the States for interrogation. And so begins a nail-biting, claustrophobic and explosive thriller that will ultimately lead British operative John Stratton to the Styx penitentiary, America's undersea prison. How do you break in to a jail a hundred metres below the ocean? Can Stratton get the information back without the US discovering him? And is everyone in the prison really who they seem to be? With its labyrinthine narrative and authentic detail, its CIA plots and White House agents, this fourth thriller in the Stratton series will catapult Duncan Falconer right into the top tier.

As a favor to a CIA officer, SBS operative Stratton carries out what appears to be an inconsequential task in Central America. But Stratton's actions push him into the midst of a national rebellion, and against his own principles he becomes emotionally involved and decides to join the popular uprising. Unknown to him, however, the rebellion is a fight not just against the local government, and the CIA is very much involved. As events spiral disastrously out of control, Stratton must face up to his biggest and most treacherous challenge to date.

In Afghanistan, elite operative John Stratton leads a raid on a remote compound, leaving no survivors. Days later, in London, Stratton is contacted by an old friend in military intelligence with a curious message about being hunted by an assassin. When the officer vanishes, Stratton is drawn into a desperate race to secure a missing nuclear warhead that has been stolen from the Pakistan military. Against an unknown enemy, he begins a heart-stopping search for the bomb that will take him from a Taliban hideout just a few miles outside Bagram Air Base to the crowded streets of Manhattan. A terrifying and authentic vision of the special forces world by an ex-SBS operative, this is Duncan Falconer's most gripping thriller to date.

When elite operative John Stratton is sent to Yemen by the Secret Intelligence Service to track down a suspected al-Qaeda cell, he thinks he knows what he is dealing with. But when he and his colleagues get captured by Somali pirates, all bets are off. Stratton discovers what it is like to be held hostage by ruthless men who have a deadly agenda - men for whom Stratton and his colleagues are just bargaining chips. And this is no ordinary hostage situation: Stratton has stepped right into the middle of a massive and sickening jihadist operation. Fighting trained warriors who know no fear, Stratton's skill and ingenuity will be tested as never before as he battles for his life and for the values he holds dear...

After a surveillance mission in Sevastopol goes badly wrong, Stratton finds himself doing penance at MI16, the government's clandestine organisation that creates weapons equipment for special forces and the secret service. But Sevastopol has started something. In the North Sea a team of hijackers take over the giant Morpheus oil platform. They are demanding two billion dollars. Inside twenty-four hours. Or the bodies will start falling. With the SBS overstretched and its surveillance team locked down, there is only one option: Stratton and a team of unproven operatives from MI16. Stratton knows he has to redeem himself and he also has his own agenda. One of the men on the rig is an old friend. And Stratton intends to save him. But one of Stratton's team is not what they appear to be. A traitor. With a deadly agenda of their own. And Morpheus is just the beginning. This is the incendiary sixth thriller in the Stratton series by the UK's leading ex-SF professional.

Two hundred miles south of the Devon coastline, Palestinian freedom fighter Abed Abu Omar and twenty men prepare for their most daring mission yet - the hijack of a supertanker, a five-storey superstructure laden with oil. Meanwhile, in an Elizabethan country house, SBS operative Stratton has been seconded to bodyguard work and is bored by the lack of challenge. Not for long. With the helter-skelter pace that defined Duncan Falconer's brilliant debut THE HOSTAGE, Stratton has been whisked away by helicopter to assist in a daring rescue. THE HIJACK ranges from London to the Gaza Strip, from Riga in Latvia to Jerusalem. With a rich cast of characters from Russian secret service operatives to Al Qaeda terrorists and the Israeli military, the authentic detail and heartstopping narrative will propel Duncan Falconer to the highest class of adventure writers.

Three men--an Iraqi, a former coalition soldier, and a journalist--drive together from Baghdad towards Fallujah as the U. S. Marines encircle the city to take it apart. The men are supposedly on a single mission to seek a recent kidnap victim, but in truth all three have very different aims in the besieged town, and each keep a dark secret from the others. Greed, ambition, and guilt are what separates their individual motivations, but a single miscalculation could bring an end to them all. Delicately intertwined in this tense thriller is a dangerous and forbidden love story, converging at the climax with a nail-bitingly deadly twist.