The Runner cover art

The Runner

The heart-stopping thriller from bestselling author of the Dan 'Spider' Shepherd series

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Runner

By: Stephen Leather
Narrated by: Laura Kirman
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 The explosive new stand-alone thriller from the author of the Spider Shepherd series

Sally Page is an MI5 'footie', a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains 'legends': fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses where the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals.

One day she goes out for a coffee run from the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth . . .

(p) 2020 Isis Publishing Ltd©2020 Stephen Leather Crime Thrillers Espionage Spies & Politics Suspense Thriller & Suspense

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Triggers cover art
Takedown cover art
Tango One cover art
Spider Shepherd: SAS cover art
The Fireman cover art
The Bombmaker cover art
The Bag Carrier cover art
The Chinaman cover art
The Shout cover art
The Hunting cover art
The Solitary Man cover art
Rogue Warrior cover art
The Eyewitness cover art
The Tunnel Rats cover art
Killing Time cover art
The Birthday Girl cover art

Critic reviews

Thought-provoking, high-octane chase thriller with style
Entertains and whisks the reader along at a breath-taking pace
Leather once again delivers high-octane thrill-a-minute action that reads like a pitch for a Netflix series
The conclusion is as high-powered and explosive as I've come to expect from Leather, and this is another compelling military-grade thriller with characters both old and new
A cracking Leather standalone . . . It left me breathless!
All stars
Most relevant
Great book as usual by Stephen Leather. But the reader was appalling. It would help in a book of this nature if she could actually pronounce the names of weapons correctly for a start.

I wouldn't listen to another book on audible she narrated. Almost didn't finish it and bought the book proper.

Was Paul Thornley Busy?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed the story but the voices for the male characters (and there are mostly male characters) are terrible, especially the bad attempt at a northerner. Also, what the flip is a car bean? I'm guessing she means carbine but the way she pronounces it is really distracting, someone should have told her! Fortunately the performance wasn't so bad that it ruined the story, just could have been better.

This is the first Stephen Leather book I've listened too/ 'read', I'll probably check out his others!

enjoyed the story but not the performance.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I bought this as an extension to the last Spider Shepherd book not knowing quite what to expect. Needless to say it read like a typical Stephen Leather thriller with action and danger a plenty as well as well known and familiar characters from the Spider Shepherd books.

I am not sure the plot or heroine are fully believable but nevertheless the book is enjoyable and I would fully expect Sally to form the basis of a whole new series akin to the Lex Harper series.

A lady spider is born.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Volume keeps fluctuating as chapters change.
Very good story though. Up to Stephen Leather’s usual standard.

Recording issues

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Let me make it clear it not that Laura Kirman is a bad narrator its just that imo she doesn't suit this particular story. I can usually settle into men's voices voiced by women and womens by men but in this case it sounds a bit like the three men playing women pretending to be men in Life of Brian. Very funny. Sorry Laura.

As per the story yes good job from Stephen, i could return this book but i don't think that's fair to Author and narrator. Audible needs to pay attention to voice matching the story.

Good story let down by narration.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews