John Steele has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Seven Skins.
Ravenhill
Summary
Belfast, 1993: Jackie Shaw is a young tearaway running with paramilitaries in Belfast. He treads a fine line keeping psychotic hard-man Rab Simpson in check while sleeping with gang leader Billy Tyrie's beautiful wife on the side. When a bomb claims nine lives, he is given the role of getaway driver in a planned reprisal killing, a key role in a major operation. But Jackie may not be who he seems.... Twenty years later Jackie returns to the city for his father's funeral after disappearing in mysterious circumstances. He wants to mourn then leave, but when figures from his past emerge, he is left with no choice but to revisit his violent former life. The first in the Jackie Shaw series, Ravenhill is a stunning debut novel from a brilliant new voice in crime fiction.
©2017 John Steele (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
Staying Alive
Summary
John Steele left his family and home at the tender age of 16 to join the Royal Navy. In a select branch of only 200, he subsequently qualified as the youngest clearance diver at that time. He then moved on to a life as a commercial oilfield diver, and for 22 years worked in the unforgiving depths of the North Sea and Persian Gulf. In 2004 a new industry was opening up. After an intense reeducation he secured a job with one of the largest private security companies working with the reconstruction of Iraq. This involved explosive and gunshot filled daily runs deep into the heart of the Mosul and Baghdad red zones at the height of the postwar troubles. Security tasks followed in Africa involving anti-piracy duties aboard ships off the dangerous Somali coastline. An advisory position was then offered in the swamp area around Brass Island in Bayelsa State working with the Nigerian military’s Joint Task Force. He now has a gold-prospecting operation 230km above the Arctic Circle in a beautiful but wild part of Finland. He successfully obtained his own gold claim in 2019, which was aptly named “Kaikki Peliin” or in English "all in". Excerpt: "As I U-turned, my wheels slipped off the tarmac into the gooey mud and the vehicle hesitated. I slipped into four-wheel drive and gassed it. My vehicle took the brunt of incoming PKM light machine gun and AK47 fire from insurgents hidden in the fruit and veg stand and sand berms. The rounds impacting the vehicle’s armour sounded like sledgehammers and eventually at least one found a weak spot and entered the engine bay. I could feel the engine dying as I desperately tried to move away from the junction. A few seconds later, I ended up facing away from the contact point with a dead engine stuck in first gear, holding the key down and chugging up the road with flat tyres and moving on the batteries and starter motor! We came to a grinding halt in the middle of the kill zone..."
©2020 John Steele (P)2020 John Steele
Seven Skins
Summary
Seven Skins - two words scrawled above a hit list. Six names - targets for assassination by bomb, bullet or blade. Three killers - two vicious professionals and an idealistic young terrorist. Two Security Service officers - confused and at each other’s throats. One lost girl - abused and on the run. And Jackie Shaw - outnumbered, disavowed and ready to tear an entire city apart. When a series of apparently random assassinations hit London, MI5 and GCHQ deduce that the killers are working through a hit list of retired security forces operatives and that their next target is an ex-police officer from Belfast now living rough in the capital. Desperate to find the officer before he too is eliminated, the Security Services coerce Jackie Shaw, a man steeped in the violent history of Northern Ireland, into working for them. While the three killers stalk their next victim, Jackie trawls the city’s underbelly in search of their target as he tries to protect a girl desperate to escape a gang of brutal traffickers. Leaving a trail of bullet casings and bodies, Jackie and the girl find themselves alone and on the run, fighting not just to uncover what or who the Seven Skins are but to save their own lives.
©2018 John Steele (P)2018 Audible, Ltd