Breakaway Books

Authored by Elliot Ackerman; Published August 2025; Thriller

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

If you take a classic spy thriller, transport it to this year, and add a dose of weirdness, Sheepdogs will be the result. As zany as it is, it also feels surprisingly true to life.

In Sheepdogs, Skwerl, a disgraced former defense contractor, is hired to “repossess” a luxury jet and cajoles his old friend Cheese into joining him on the mission. Almost immediately, the job starts to fall apart, and the two find themselves wondering what exactly is so special about this jet. With Skwerl’s dominatrix girlfriend Sinead, Skwerl and Cheese must figure out how to stay alive and who is behind the attacks against them, hopefully while ensuring they still receive their own payment in the process.

I have to wonder what insanity was happening in the author’s brain when he came up with the cast of characters featured in Sheepdogs. These guys do not match the stereotypes that normally feature in action thrillers. Truthfully, the oddness of the characters is one of the things that keeps the novel so interesting, with an otherwise standard plot. The other distinguishing characteristic—that the novel feels hyper-specific to this moment in time, with references to the war in Ukraine and the botched evacuation from Afghanistan—adds an interesting texture, particularly for those readers who follow current events.  

The author has somehow tinged this novel with both cynicism and hope for the goodness of human nature. The power of privately funded militaries is a major feature of this book, and that comes with both positive and negative consequences. When governments fail, these organizations can pick up the slack—but who directs them? Who controls them? Who profits from them? As much as the heroes, and even the villains, of this novel attempt to ensure that the metaphorical little guy is protected, their herculean efforts don’t always make a difference, especially when they’re up against the Goliath of private militaries. The result in this novel is a carefully tread line between optimism at how good individuals can be and pessimism at the general state of the world.

If you are looking for a vision of the spy thriller adapted for today’s geopolitics, give Sheepdogs a try. It’s not quite as straight-laced as Tom Clancy, but it’s all the more entertaining for it.