With Scarecrow Matthew Reilly goes further than ever before into the supercharged adrenalin, high-testosterone thrillers that have become his trademark. His heroes constantly strain plausibility with their feats of stunt-driving and snappy shooting; with their hair-breadth escapes and entire ruthlessness. His series hero, "Scarecrow" Schofield finds himself on a list of the bravest soldiers and most wanted terrorists on the planet, pursued by mercenaries and bounty hunters who want nothing but to take his head. This is a book full of outrageous conspiracies and a villain with a taste for microwaving his victims, boiling them in oil and throwing them to the sharks. It"s a fairground ride of a thriller that zips along at a cracking pace from the icy coasts of Siberia to the caves of Afghanistan, the glass towers of London"s Dockland and the treacherously hairpin roads of the Brittany coast. Reilly builds constantly--this is a book whose tension and action sequences escalate well past the point normally called over the top. This is a book full of ingenious ultra-violence in which everyone is at risk--Reilly is a gaudy writer but never a stupid one or one who fails to follow through his own plot logic. --Roz Kaveney