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Sir Ranulph Fiennes

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The Feather Men Hardcover – 17 Oct. 1991

by Sir Ranulph Fiennes Bt OBE (Author)

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The story of a secret organization called "The Feathermen" and their 14-year attempt to trace the killers of a number of British ex-servicemen in Britain and abroad. Ranulph Fiennes has published eight books, two of which have been in "The Sunday Times" bestseller list.

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Print length

280 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date

17 Oct. 1991
ISBN-10

9780747510499
ISBN-13

978-0747510499
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0747510490
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing; First Edition (17 Oct. 1991)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780747510499
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0747510499

Best Sellers Rank: 379,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,404 in Other Religious & Spiritual Practices
- 4,713 in Other Religions
- 56,965 in Social Sciences (Books)

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Sir Ranulph Fiennes

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4.4 out of 5

744 global ratings

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Christopher James

Great Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2024

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Films of books never do the original story justice and this is a perfect example.. and that's all I will say about this particular story.. The film killer elite is great in a James Bond way and I see how it was tailored to appeal to the action fixated psychology of modern day film goers, especially given the addition of a role for Robert Dinero to appeal to an American audience.. I admit to enjoying the film immensely which is why I read this book. But I guarantee that t the film is only as good as the story it is based on and this is a story that catches the imagination and doesn't let go once. Worth ten stars or more on any given day.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 September 2022

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A truly amazing and absorbing read. Well written with at times too much detail but on reflection it was needed to ensure the reader understood fully what was going on. I found the film fascinating and discovered the book from the film end. I’m pleased I did. If this story is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then I take my hat off to the “Feather Men” for looking after those that the Law finds it impossible to defend. Thoroughly recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2024

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Just as good as the original

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Wendy tinsley

Superb service, book in great condition and exactly as I wanted.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 December 2023

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Superb service. Book in great condition. Prompt delivery. Already enjoying reading it. Can’t recommend highly enough.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2013

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I found this an interesting and exciting read but highly dubious about the authors claims regarding its supposed authenticity. Fiennes goes to great efforts to suggest that much of the material is fact and unclear as to what is actually fiction within the story. He is certainly not the only author to do this but this does not justified the potential for his book to do harm. I was left feeling extremely sorry for the families of the characters portrayed in the book. They lost their loved one and had had their grief compounded by embellished tales (although many call Fiennes description downright lies) as to the circumstances of their death.
I think this would be easily addressed by Fiennes making a more frank disclosure in future editions. The book is mostly fiction and should be sold as such. I very much doubt the duplicity adds to sales and may address some of the moral qualms that discourage people like me from purchasing other titles of his.

2 people found this helpful

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Tracy Fenwick

A good read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 September 2022

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Saw the film that this book was about and wanted to read it, both good, book and film

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Karl Wiggins

Best book I've read in 12 months

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2019

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Killer Elite is definitely the best book I’ve read in the last 12 months

One of the overriding philosophies of the book Shantaram is that it is possible to do the ‘wrong’ thing for the ‘right’ reasons. And not only is it ‘possible’ but it is sometimes ‘necessary’ to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that the reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong, and that we don’t lie to ourselves.

Well in Killer Elite even Chairman Mao is quoted, “In given conditions a bad thing can lead to good results.”

There’s no doubt that, “The very decency of democracy hinders the prevention of numerous crimes,” and that as the law forbids the forces of the law to take them out, so the killers (I.e. drug dealers, muggers and other predators), will strike again. It is a sad fact of life that “in democratic societies that there are no-go areas where crime thrives and innocent citizens are preyed upon yet where the police are powerless to act.”

I’d therefore like to think that there are a group of people who believe that, “When the police cannot provide adequate protection (because criminals are more sophisticated at finding loopholes in the law) then more appropriate methods have to be found.”

You might call them vigilantes, yet they harm no one except characters who would continue to harm others, and if you denounce their existence you’re not stopping to think of the lives they’ve saved or the fears they’ve eased. Call them vigilantes if you like, but I’d like to think their conscience is clear.

This book discusses mostly a group of ex-Special Forces and SAS soldiers who are being targeted and killed by professional assassins. I don’t want to throw any spoilers into this review, just that I’d like to believe the whole book is true. Not, of course, those ex-SAS soldiers are being targeted and killed, but more that there are a group of people whose main object – staying ‘loosely’ within the remit of the law, and only flirting slightly with criminality - is to protect them, which surprisingly proves to be no easy task.

Thoroughly recommended

5 people found this helpful

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The Mekon

Having read the original "Feather Men", I honestly believe this to be a true and accurate account. A great read!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 October 2016

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I remember reading the original "Feather Men" back in the 80's complete with photographs and diagrams describing how the "Boston Brakes" worked. There was a lot of controversy over the book with the "establishment" insisting it was a work of fiction.
All I can say is that if it was fiction, Sir Ranulph, as well as being the worlds greatest living explorer, has an exceptionally vivid and wild imagination.
I cant see that anyone would be blessed with two such gifts!!
This is an almost word for word reprint of the original and is a fantastically absorbing read even second time round.

11 people found this helpful

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KB

Good read

Reviewed in the United States on 7 December 2023

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Be careful who you cheer for.

M. LORIS

I've enjoyed the movie, even more the book.

Reviewed in Italy on 31 January 2021

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The book has been written by one who knows the ropes, that makes the reading more interesting and never boring. That's the reason for, for example, I like also John Le Carré's novels: being them fiction or real history, they let you take a look into the lives of folks that has really been in those particular trades.

I have also appreciated the description of Omani exotic environment, that provides a pleasant and supporting frame to the narration.

The movie's plot, as usually happens, has some differences when compared to the book, but it's no place to spoilers here! Read the book and watch the movie (in whichever order you like much), I've found both of them very riveting and well done.

A pity for the title: I like much the original one, "The Feather Men", because "Killer Elite" tastes too much of rubbish literature, that it's far to be.

Great job Sir Fiennes, I've appreciated it, even if I warmly hope you can still take your rubbish out after dark!

Amazon Customer

Much more than a simple thriller.

Reviewed in Australia on 21 May 2021

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Like a number of other readers, I came to this book via the movie, which was such a success that it caused the author and the publisher to change the book's title from the original (The Feather Men). And partly because of that no doubt, I approached it at first with misconception, as a kind of action thriller, a bit like a Jason Bourne story. And it certainly has a lot of that in it. But, again because of that, I was a bit disoriented at first, because the prelude, the initial chapters, were slow and over-detailed for that kind of fiction, almost the opposite of a page-turner. It was really my interest in the film, and my respect for the author's career, as a former SAS officer and a very adventurous explorer as well as a writer (and brother to the actor Ralph Fiennes) that gave me the impetus to read on. But having passed that initial stage, I was soon captivated - both by the story itself, and by the wealth of detailed inside knowledge it reveals - of SAS actions and training, of a war in Oman I knew almost nothing about, of the mechanics of mounting assassinations so skilfully and stealthily as to make them appear to be accidents. Even then, it wasn't until the final chapters that I fully realised that this is not a work of fiction, but a kind of documentary, and that the author himself became an unwitting actor in it - and that this is what led him to write it. And having finally come to that realisation, I can only recommend the book as highly worth reading. I will certainly read it again one day, before too long, if only to appreciate better the importance of the leading chapters, as well as recapture the thrill of the story itself. As a struggling writer of fiction myself I can only admire the skill of the author in making such a complicated story come to life, and making something so out of the ordinary appear credible. In that respect, it reminded me of The Quiet American, by Graham Greene - set in Vietnam, during the first Indochina war in the early fifties. I happened to read that book in Saigon in 1963, some ten years after it was written, in the city where much of the action takes place, and even though the situation had changed since then the book still struck me as totally true to life. Surely the best mark for that kind of fiction.

Another thing worth noting too - in both cases - is the different treatment given to the story between the book and the film. In the film, Killer Elite, the chief assassin, Danny Brice (played by Jason Statham) is made to appear almost as a hero, a reluctant killer, retired from the profession of contract killer but virtually blackmailed back into it in order to save a friend, Hunter (Robert DeNiro) who faces death at the hands of the Sheikh, who seeks revenge for the death of his three sons, all killed by British Special Forces. Only when Danny provides proof of their execution - which must be made to appear accidental - and a taped confession of their guilt, will Hunter be released. The original Special Forces operatives are made to appear brutal and cynical, no better than killers for hire. There is no mention of a multi-million dollar fee as the main motive for Danny and his two accolytes, Davies and Meier.

This is very different from the book, where the chief assassin, the leader of the small killer cell called The Clinic, de Villiers, is motivated solely by money; and where the British Special Forces involved in the death of the Sheikh's three sons are shown to have been simply soldiers doing their duty in a bloody and merciless war in which the three sons were themselves very willing participants, in a communist-inspired insurrection against the lawful regime in Oman, which the British were defending. The character Hunter does not exist in the book. Spike, played by David Owen in the film, is the real hero in the book, trying to discover why former (and serving) British Special Forces members are being targetted for assassination, for no apparent reason - they were never guilty of anything resembling what might now be called a war crime. And in the end he succeeds not only in foiling de Villiers final attempt but in capturing him as well. The author (and we) do not know what happens to him in the end. But he certainly does not return to his native Australia to rejoin his girlfriend in the Yarra Valley.

In that respect, the film is a complete turnaround of the book, where the villains are made to appear righteous.

(Another parallel with The Quiet American, where the first film to be made of the novel, the 1958 version, with Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy, not the second version in 2002 with Michael Caine, ends up completely distorting the original story, making the English journalist, played by Redgrave, appear to be a naive and bumbling has-been and Pyle, the American agent played by Audie Murphy, is vindicated as righteous and far-seeing, in working towards the establishment of a 'third force' in Vietnam to defeat the communists and replace the effete and outdated French colonialists with the righteous forces of American freedom. I don't know if the director of that film, Joseph Mankiewitz, was still alive at the time of the final communist victory in Vietnam in 1975, but if he was, I hope he had the grace to feel at least slightly ashamed of himself for having so perverted the original film.)

Having said that, as regards the Killer Elite, both the film and the book are well worth watching and reading.

Claude Renaud

carrie52

Exactly as expected

Reviewed in France on 25 February 2014

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Very good book - exactly as described. Worthwhile seller and I will definitely more books buy in the future - delivery good too.

One person found this helpful

Bücherfreund

Kein überzeugender Thriller

Reviewed in Germany on 28 January 2020

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Das Buch vermag einen nicht wirklich zu fesseln. Es gibt ziemlich langatmige Beschreibungen mittelalterlicher Stammeskulturen, die die Handlung verzögern. Die Protagonisten bleiben von ihrer Persönlichkeit und ihren Motiven eher blass.

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The Feather Men Hardcover – 17 Oct. 1991

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