The Feather Men

The story of how a private British vigilance committee eliminated a group of contract killers who were targeting British soldiers for death

Founded in England in the late 1960s, the so-called Committee, otherwise known as the Feather Men, was a vigilante group dedicated to solving crimes that the police could not. This absorbing book details their 14-year struggle to capture the Clinic, a band of contract killers who murdered four former British soldiers. The background was this: Amr bin Issa, sheikh of a tribe in Oman, had lost four sons in his country's civil wars. Although tradition demanded that he avenge their deaths, he did nothing and was deposed as sheikh. Then he arranged with the Clinic to kill the servicemen believed responsible for the deaths of his sons. How the hired killers went about their task (making each murder look like an accident), how they were finally apprehended and how this case in 1990 also put an end to the Committee--or so Fiennes ( Hell on Ice ) contends its members have assured him--makes for a highly suspenseful tale. Readers will be given pause, however, by Fiennes's wont to romanticize vigilante justice and his assertion that for 20 years the British "have had good reason to be grateful for the Feather Men's protective presence." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A rousing tale of true adventure in which a homespun band of British vigilantes takes on and destroys a cabal of assassins-for- hire. World-class explorer Fiennes (Living Dangerously, 1988) plays a supporting role in the desperate events he was chosen to recount. At the heart of his stranger-than-fiction story are the Feather Men (so-called for their ``light touch''), a covert organization created to protect veterans of the SAS and other elite military units from reprisals by erstwhile foes. Among other adversaries, the vigilantes took on a band of contract killers known as ``the Clinic.'' In the pay of a Dhofari sheik bent on avenging five sons who had fallen in battle, the hit men stalked and liquidated four former British soldiers, all of whom had fought in Arabia's deserts. The cunning murders, which occurred over a 14-year span beginning in 1977, were carried out in such a way that local police dismissed any possibility of foul play. The Feather Men, however, soon concluded that those they had pledged to safeguard were homicide victims. In the skilled hands of the author--whom the Feather Men picked to tell their story--the facts of how a crew of retired army officers and civil servants working with volunteer operatives managed to track down and eliminate the professional assassins (whose fifth target was Fiennes himself) make for a riveting narrative. Thanks to a generous measure of dramatic license, moreover, the same holds true for the author's vivid reconstruction of episodes on which he was not briefed by principals or participants. Excepting this cavil and the moral ambiguities of rough justice: A marvelously entertaining account of good versus unequivocal evil. (Eight pages of photos--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This is the extraordinary story of a group of Englishmen who provide protection and rough justice for former members and their families of the SAS (Special Air Service). The group, known as the Feather Men because of their light touch, learned of a pattern of assassination of former SAS soldiers and attempted to avert further murders. The story is told from the point of view of both the Feather Men and the Clinic, an independent organization of contract killers. The narrative relates the chilling details of each execution, as well as the secret meetings, bloody guerrilla battles, and gradual discovery of the identity and purpose of the Clinic. The action ranges over half the globe, with such diverse landscapes as the mountains of Oman and the Welsh countryside richly evoked. The denouement reveals explorer Fiennes's very personal reasons for agreeing to tell the story and provides a justification for the vigilante activities of the Feather Men. Although at times stretching credulity, this enthralling page-turner will be a good addition to war and true crime collections.
- Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.