This is a book that sets its sights high from the off - and boy does it deliver.
London Lite
 

‘If fate is against me and I’m killed, so be it, but make it quick and painless. If I’m wounded, don’t let me be crippled. But above all don’t let me fuck up the task’

So goes the bomb technician’s prayer before every bomb he defuses. For Chris Hunter, it is a prayer he says many times over his four month tour of Iraq. His is the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world - to make safe the British sector in Iraq against some of the most hardened and technically advanced terrorists in the world. It is a 24/7 job – his team defuse over 45 bombs in the first two months alone. And the people they’re up against don’t play by the Geneva Convention. For them, there are no rules, only results. Bombs, rockets, grenades, ambushes, booby traps – death by any means necessary. Welcome to the real Wild West.

The job of Bomb Disposal Officer in Iraq is a lonely one. You are alone with the sound of your own breathing and the drumming of your heart in a protective suit in forty plus degrees of heat. The drawbridge has been pulled up behind you as you advance on your goal. Playtime is over. It’s just you and the bomb.

But for Chris Hunter, just when life couldn’t get any more dangerous, the stakes are raised again. Halfway through his tour, he is told the following: ‘They want you dead, Chris. You and your team have captured their weaponry, you’ve fingered them with forensics, you’ve neutralised a shedload of their IEDs, and basically you’re making Behadli and his lot look like cunts. They’re out to kill the golden-haired bomb man in Basra…’

This is the gripping story of RLC bomb disposal specialist Maj Chris Hunter's four-month tour of duty in Iraq
Soldier

One of the most important reads of the year.
Glasgow Evening Times

You're left in awe and wondering if we're paying Our Boys enough for going through this kind of hell. And doubting it.
Books Sport

Thoughtful, gripping and engaging...I found myself utterly drawn in by Hunter's clear and straightforward narrative....It should be on every politician's Christmas holiday reading list
Kate Mosse The Times

One of the most important reads of the year
Newcastle Upon Tyne Evening Chronicle

Will do for Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush what McNab did for Saddam and George Senior
Evening Standard

... packed with such powerful descriptions of coming under fire that at times you begin to imagine you have picked up the script for a Hollywood action movie.
London Lite

This is a frightening story with a difference from the frontline.
The Good Book Guide

Buy Eight Lives Down and other great titles from rBooks.co.uk.