Eight Lives Down

By: Chris Hunter

Narrated by: Julian Rhind Tutt

Chris Hunter has the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world: he's responsible for bomb disposal in the British sector of Iraq, pitted against some of the most ruthless and technically advanced terrorists in the world. It is a 24/7 job; his team defused 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.

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, "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. They're out to kill the golden-haired bomb man in Basra."

Suddenly Chris Hunter is not only saving other people's lives, he's saving his own.

© Chris Hunter; (P) Random House

enlightening, relentless, and depressing

An outstanding narration of a fascinating but depressingly predictable service of a segment of the British Army in Iraq. Yet, Hunter writes in a fetchingly personal style, presenting with intelligence the reality of life in a foreign army placed in a relatively friendless land. The final chapter of all of our post-9/11 realities is yet to be written, and, likewise, this book doesn't even attempt to assign a positive outcome to the whole bloody mess, either. Pity.