Looking for action? Rob says to try Andy McNab

Enter Nick Stone. He's not quite on the same level as Jack Ryan, Gabriel Allon or Jason Bourne, but after you've wrung all the action out of Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Daniel Silva, you might want to give Nick a look. He's ex- SAS and he's smart, crude, wry and more than a little unhappy with his higher-ups. Nick Stone is the creation of Andy McNab, an author who knows the subject well, having been in the SAS himself and participated in missions all over the world. In the 13 Nick Stone novels, McNab has his alter-ego fighting Al Quaeda, the IRA, the Russian mafia, Saddam Hussein and other assorted terrorists. Start at the beginning with Remote Control, when Stone was still under SAS orders. In the later books, he goes independent, accepting assignments from a variety of intelligence services. What McNab's novels have going for them is first-person knowledge of special ops detail, the disgruntled grunt's eye view of the world, an imperfect hero and lots of action.