Stand By, Stand By - Chris Ryan

Written by Tom Clare in Book Reviews, Saturday 30 August, 2008

Still Waiting For Ryan's Best...

Chris Ryan's first foray into fictional writing struggles to hit the highs that its predecessor The One That Got Away managed. Stand By, Stand By is written with the same attention to detail thanks to the authors SAS background, but beyond this its characters and scenarios are uninspired, meaning it never develops into a real page-turner.
First published in 1996, Stand By, Stand By is a tale centred around Sergeant Geordie Sharp of the SAS, who upon losing a family member in a botched IRA bomb attack in Belfast, sets out on a mission of vengeance. Whilst the story is hardly the most unusual of yarns, it does have its moments and, but for a couple of sections towards the end where the perspective shifts away from Geordie, it isn't too difficult to follow. The problem is, whilst the author has invested plenty in mapping out realistic situations and scenarios, his characters leave a lot to be desired.
Reading this after TOTGA will make the reader uncomfortably aware of just how closely Geordie has been modelled on his author. Both have a similar family set-up - a wife and young child, as well as difficulties communicating in the aftermath of bad experiences during a botched mission in Iraq. Sound familiar? Sharp is based in Herefordshire, just as Ryan had been and, as his nickname suggests, also hails from North-East England. Perhaps the most irritating point of all concerns Sharp listening to Eric Clapton; the one artist Ryan mentions buying an album of just after the Bravo Two Zero mission. All of these recurrent similarities are clear simply from reading his earlier book and it becomes very difficult to ignore the fact that Geordie is a lazy creation.
The way in which Sharp's relationships are dealt with also seems awkward at times, particularly with women. The novels leading lady, Tracy, seems to be assessed more in a serious of critical evaluations than through any emotional reaction on the part of Geordie; making her seem more a well-trained object of his idle desires than anything else.
Both the army personnel and the mission scenarios are nicely fleshed out and, in keeping with the realistic slant of Ryan's writing, pleasantly plausible. However, despite being a work of fiction, the events that occur in Stand By, Stand By seem markedly less remarkable than those that really took place in The One That Got Away and, in an almost self-conscious attempts to stay within the realms of possibility, plays things a little too safe. One instance of how this harms the story is in its chief villain Declan Farrell, an IRA big-wig who Geordie pursues in the belief that it is he who was responsible for his family bereavement. After reading of Farrell's unsavoury torture techniques, you sense that a truly malevolent bad guy could be in the making, but as a single SAS member Sharp isn't really given much of a chance to make things personal. Thus his pursuit of the criminal tends to rest on chance decisions from his superiors and some ridiculously convenient coincidences, neither of which make for satisfying reading.

Whilst not particularly original, the story itself is readable enough, and with the action travelling to places as diverse as Northern Ireland and Colombia, Ryan is frequently able to display the extent of his knowledge and enthusiasm as to the subject matter. His writing style also shows some signs of development from his first book - an evocatively depicted Colombian rainforest being the highlight of Ryan's travels - but you are left wishing he had relied a little less on personal experiences and allowed for a touch more creativity in his writing. Worth a look for fans of thrillers, though by no means an essential purchase.

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