‘Stop At Nothing’ by Michael Ledwidge

Published by Headline,
5 March 2020.
ISBN: 978-1-47226576-0 (HB)

Michael Gannon is enjoying a day’s fishing aboard his diving boat, the Donegal Rambler.  He is some thirty miles offshore from Little Abaco, an island in the Bahamas he now calls home, when he witnesses a jet plane crashing into the sea a short distance away.  Gannon is unable to send a mayday alert from the remote spot because his radio antenna is broken.  There are no other boats around and he quickly makes his way towards the sinking wreckage.  When he arrives, there is still no sight or sound of a rescue team, so he grabs his diving gear and plunges into the water to see whether there are any survivors.  As he swims into the twisted metal fuselage, he makes a discovery that leads him into a situation that will threaten not only his own life, but also the lives of those around him.

The writing is characterised by the author’s use of succinct sentences which burst from short chapters to drive a relentless and thrilling narrative.  Gannon, the likeable tough guy protagonist, finds himself working alongside two equally engaging characters as the tragedy of the plane crash turns into a full-blown international conspiracy.  The trio endeavour to make sense of a world in which truth and justice are turned upside down but find themselves moving from disbelief to anger when they confront treachery deep within the security services to which they are, or have been, attached.

Stop At Nothing thunders along at breath-taking speed and it took me along with it.  The story is absorbing, outrageous and unpredictable.  There are twists and turns galore as Gannon and his friends confront powerful villains who kill without mercy from their positions of power and privilege.  A rip-roaring read that intrigues and entertains from the first page to the last.

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Reviewer: Dot Marshall-Gent

Michael Ledwidge is an American author of Irish decent. He was born and raised in the Bronx. A graduate of Manhattan College, he is married and has two children.

Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.