The Chicken Shak Spy

ABOUT Simon Lucas

Simon Lucas
Indie novelist, Simon Lucas, is the author of The Chicken Shak Spy, the first book in a conspiracy thriller/spy novel series that follows the work of Graham Chapman, a reluctant secret agent.
Simon is also the author of Beyond the Door, a traditional genre children's fiction novel.More...

Description

The Pope is visiting the UK. All is going well until a death threat is received from a previously unknown organisation. Meanwhile, a small, anti-religion organisation is bombed, resulting in the deaths of all members - with the exception of one.

The Hunter Group, a top secret security agency, are called in to ensure the safety of the Pope. Jeremy Hunter, the agency's director, immediately calls in his top agent, Graham Chapman, to investigate the death threat. Graham, who has never wanted to be a secret agent, reluctantly agrees. This, he is determined, will be his final mission.

During the next fifteen hours, Graham chases several leads, none of which get them any closer to the truth. Meanwhile, someone has kidnapped the Pope, and no-one knows where he is...

Will the Pope survive his trip to the UK? Will the Hunter Group get the bottom of the plot? Will they discover who is trying to kill the Pope? Will Graham stay the course?

The Chicken Shak Spy is the first gripping novel in the Chicken Shak Spy series from Simon Lucas.

Ever wondered if one of your friends is actually a spy? I did! He claimed to deliver chicken for a living, but I could not believe that this is actually what he did all day. Perhaps this was just a cover, and he was actually a spy! Taking this as my starting point, Graham Chapman, the Chicken Shak Spy evolved. Like my friend, he tells people he's a chicken delivery guy, but actually he is a secret agent employed by a top secret private security company. Have you ever felt stuck in a job? Perhaps you've really wanted to give it all up and do something different. Graham Chapman is the same. He's never wanted to be a spy, and is fed up with the grief he gets from his colleagues. Unfortunately, he feels indebted to his boss, who saved his life, and can't bring himself to walk away. Do you find yourself wondering what is going on behind the scenes when a high profile visitor arrives in your country? What if a group wants to kill him? What if the people in the group actually have a convincing reason for wanting him dead? This was the final idea behind the plot for The Chicken Shak Spy. The members of the group in question will stop at nothing to kill the Pope, but not for the reasons that you might think... The Chicken Shak Spy has been getting rave reviews from everyone who has read it. It's been compared to the work of Dan Brown, Lee Child and John Grisham. If you enjoy a good thriller, you'll love The Chicken Shak Spy!

Alex: The tone of the story reminded me greatly of a Dan Brown book - however I found that this annoyed me a lot less.  While I compare this to a Dan Brown novel - I also found it a lot better than a Dan Brown novel - the characters seem a lot more believable.

Phill: I found the plot really got going in the second half of the book, keeping me gripped until the end, a real page-turner!  If you like 'pop fiction' and want something pretty light and fast-paced to read, you won't regret buying this book.

Steve: In writing this novel Simon has managed to take all the best parts of the genre while avoiding being as annoying as Dan Brown. The result is that this is a great thriller with an outrageous plot and characters that you can sympathise with. Once I found the time to start reading it, I couldn't stop. (I finished it at 5am!)

Ian: This is a really enjoyable book. As an apparent mix of conspiracy thriller and spy novel the concept seemed to have something of a Dan Brown feel to it, but the book itself was much better than that. A truly unlikely hero is an example of the kind of reader wrong-footing that the author revels in, and adds to the unpredictability. It starts with a bang - literally - and that in itself is almost a twist in the story, and there are many other twists and turns along the way that mean not only do you not know how it is going to end but you are not always sure what is going on (in a good way) as a group of heroic operatives try to uncover the truth and race against time to prevent disaster.

Chris: A spellbinding tale which kept my attention from the first paragraph to the last page! I would throughly recommend this to anyone who enjoys thrillers!