"...these are stories crying out to be turned into a gritty television drama - think a true story version of The Night Manager." Sydney Morning Herald
'I fix things. I can build you a house or remodel your bathroom. I can also make bad situations - and bad people - disappear.'
Meet Mike. Runs a building site, drives a ute, likes a beer, loves his nail-gun.
But Mike is hiding in plain sight. When the Pentagon call him in as 'Big Unit', he's another kind of contractor - one as handy with a Colt M4 as he is with a Skilsaw, a man as accustomed to danger, death, and pain as he is to a hammer and nails.
In six action-packed true stories we follow a man who left foreign intelligence for a life 'on the tools', only to discover there's too many dangerous scenarios and terrible people still out there. The good guys need a James Bond in Blundstones. They need The Contractor.
Tradie. Spy. Big Unit.
Follow Big Unit as he goes undercover to save a family trapped by an ISIS-run drug cartel in the seedy back streets of Northern Pakistan to terrorist-besieged Paris to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Australia's most wanted murderer.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST TRUE CRIME 2018 Mark Abernethy is an Australian novelist, ghost-writer and journalist. His latest release is The Contractor, a selection of six true stories about an Australian carpenter who is also a private intelligence contractor, operating in the counter-terrorism area. A sequel to this extraordinary story - At Hell's Gate - will be released by Pan Macmillan before Christmas 2017.
Abernethy grew up in New Zealand and has been living in Australia for most of his adult life. He has written for The Bulletin, Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review, and is the author of the spy-thrillers Golden Serpent, Second Strike, Double Back and Counter Attack. He has also written military thrillers Arctic Floor and Strikeforce Lightning as Mark Aitken. The true-life tales of a counter terrorist contractor (and part-time tradie).
