Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

On top of his game, 03 Sep 2008
If Gerald Seymour was not quite so populist he would probably get greater plaudits for his work.

Having said that, his work is topical &, surprisingly for a populist novelist, almost prosaic.

This book marks a slight change in approach from his norm as the sub plot carries within it an almost mirror image of today's terrorist in the form of a freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil war. Certainly food for thought.

A cracking read as ever.

Very Good, but no real build up, 28 May 2008
This book kept me reading from start to finish, and i was never bored. But saying that there was no build up to the final sequence and even then i felt it was all over too quickly, some of the characters were comepletely forgotten. Other than that this was a very enjoyable book

Perhaps Seymour tried a little too hard on this one, 23 May 2008
Gerald Seymour is, and will likely remain, my favorite author of potboilers based on contemporary international tensions and conflicts. But, my reaction to THE WALKING DEAD was that perhaps he tried a little too hard with the secondary plot and a superabundance of characters in this one. Sometimes, simpler is better. What could have been a lean and mean thriller is rendered mean and flabby.

The primary plot features the Scorpion, a facilitator of suicide bombing missions, who's recruited the young Saudi medical student, Ibrahim Hussein, to carry an explosive vest into the heart of England. Helping the pair are the Engineer, an old friend of the Scorpion who builds the bombs, plus a deep cover cell of naturalized Brits of foreign heritage who've been recruited by local imams into the jihadist cause: Faria, Khalid, Ramzi, Syed, and Jamal. Opposing them are Dickie Naylor, five days from retirement, who supervises the MI6 desk charged with intercepting overseas-born, foreign-based suicide terrorists, and Joe Hegner, an FBI agent from the Riyadh station previously blinded by an Islamic martyr's blast. Then there's the ambitious Mary Reakes, Dickie's assistant, who's already measuring Naylor's office for redecoration. Flown in from their farm in the Inner Hebrides are Xavier Boniface and Donald Clydesdale, former colleagues of Dickie's in Army Intelligence and experts at "taking the gloves off" during enhanced interrogation techniques. Finally, there's Midge, a spaniel trained to sniff-out explosives.

In the secondary plot, we have Ozzie and Ollie Curtis, brothers on trial for the armed robbery of a jewelry store. Their shady solicitor is Nat Wilson, who arranges for Benny "the Nobbler" Edwards to bribe one of the jurors, Julian Wright, to deadlock the panel's verdict. As the trial winds down, the jurors are sequestered and placed behind a protective shield of officers, one of whom is David Banks, seconded from the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service after falling out of favor with his boss and ostracized by his professional colleagues. Banks, a loner, is obsessed with the diary of his great-uncle, Cecil Darke, who penned the journal during his time fighting with the communists during the Spanish Civil War.

Further out on the periphery of the story are George Marriot, a crippled ex-bounty hunter that once tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Steve Vickers, a city tour guide, Avril Harris, an ER nurse with car problems, and Lee Donkin, a drug addict and petty thief. All four are residents of Luton.

Seymour's strength has always been making his characters, particularly the protagonists, ordinary folks with everyday problems who manage to muddle through and save the day, or at least not lose it, at the world's gritty and grotty edges. In THE WALKING DEAD, the gritty and grotty edge is Luton north of London. But, then, I gather that many Englishmen wouldn't disagree with that assessment. Not having been there, I couldn't say.

In any case, the primary story line has all the elements necessary to make an excellent thriller and, for me, it got to the point where the occasional textual diversions to the subplot were just plain annoying inasmuch as the latter totally lacked the substance and suspense of the former. Granted, Banks eventually bridges the gap between the two to become a key player in the novel's conclusion. However, I couldn't help but wish that the author had found a better way to illustrate his point that victories in conflicts between opposing forces more often than not hinge on unforeseeable and random events.

Actually, I would've liked a larger role for Midge.


Seymour tops again, 01 May 2008
I've read most of Seymours novels. Most are great reads, a few are average, but I have to say this is one of the best. Great storyline with some vivid and harrowing parts which remained with me long after the book was finished. Children charging over minefields in a hail of bullets and the "fitting" of the waistcoat scene are just a couple. Must have read the last half of the book in a few hours.
Don't look for anything new from Seymour in this one. All the classic elements are here, but its the way he tells em.

Please -no more!, 06 Nov 2007
Well I have read two of Gerald Seymour's books and I have no desire to read a third.
There is a trait in his writing of over padding the text and repeating information.
These books to me are weak.Just a flog to get from cover to cover.The plot is obvious and poorly conceived.
The only parts of the books I liked were the diary entries from the spanish civil war.
The final nail for me was the realisation of the plot strand to do with the used car buyer was utter nonsense!!
Really!
If this is the best -lord help us.....

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

On top of his game, 03 Sep 2008
If Gerald Seymour was not quite so populist he would probably get greater plaudits for his work.

Having said that, his work is topical &, surprisingly for a populist novelist, almost prosaic.

This book marks a slight change in approach from his norm as the sub plot carries within it an almost mirror image of today's terrorist in the form of a freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil war. Certainly food for thought.

A cracking read as ever.

Very Good, but no real build up, 28 May 2008
This book kept me reading from start to finish, and i was never bored. But saying that there was no build up to the final sequence and even then i felt it was all over too quickly, some of the characters were comepletely forgotten. Other than that this was a very enjoyable book

Perhaps Seymour tried a little too hard on this one, 23 May 2008
Gerald Seymour is, and will likely remain, my favorite author of potboilers based on contemporary international tensions and conflicts. But, my reaction to THE WALKING DEAD was that perhaps he tried a little too hard with the secondary plot and a superabundance of characters in this one. Sometimes, simpler is better. What could have been a lean and mean thriller is rendered mean and flabby.

The primary plot features the Scorpion, a facilitator of suicide bombing missions, who's recruited the young Saudi medical student, Ibrahim Hussein, to carry an explosive vest into the heart of England. Helping the pair are the Engineer, an old friend of the Scorpion who builds the bombs, plus a deep cover cell of naturalized Brits of foreign heritage who've been recruited by local imams into the jihadist cause: Faria, Khalid, Ramzi, Syed, and Jamal. Opposing them are Dickie Naylor, five days from retirement, who supervises the MI6 desk charged with intercepting overseas-born, foreign-based suicide terrorists, and Joe Hegner, an FBI agent from the Riyadh station previously blinded by an Islamic martyr's blast. Then there's the ambitious Mary Reakes, Dickie's assistant, who's already measuring Naylor's office for redecoration. Flown in from their farm in the Inner Hebrides are Xavier Boniface and Donald Clydesdale, former colleagues of Dickie's in Army Intelligence and experts at "taking the gloves off" during enhanced interrogation techniques. Finally, there's Midge, a spaniel trained to sniff-out explosives.

In the secondary plot, we have Ozzie and Ollie Curtis, brothers on trial for the armed robbery of a jewelry store. Their shady solicitor is Nat Wilson, who arranges for Benny "the Nobbler" Edwards to bribe one of the jurors, Julian Wright, to deadlock the panel's verdict. As the trial winds down, the jurors are sequestered and placed behind a protective shield of officers, one of whom is David Banks, seconded from the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service after falling out of favor with his boss and ostracized by his professional colleagues. Banks, a loner, is obsessed with the diary of his great-uncle, Cecil Darke, who penned the journal during his time fighting with the communists during the Spanish Civil War.

Further out on the periphery of the story are George Marriot, a crippled ex-bounty hunter that once tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Steve Vickers, a city tour guide, Avril Harris, an ER nurse with car problems, and Lee Donkin, a drug addict and petty thief. All four are residents of Luton.

Seymour's strength has always been making his characters, particularly the protagonists, ordinary folks with everyday problems who manage to muddle through and save the day, or at least not lose it, at the world's gritty and grotty edges. In THE WALKING DEAD, the gritty and grotty edge is Luton north of London. But, then, I gather that many Englishmen wouldn't disagree with that assessment. Not having been there, I couldn't say.

In any case, the primary story line has all the elements necessary to make an excellent thriller and, for me, it got to the point where the occasional textual diversions to the subplot were just plain annoying inasmuch as the latter totally lacked the substance and suspense of the former. Granted, Banks eventually bridges the gap between the two to become a key player in the novel's conclusion. However, I couldn't help but wish that the author had found a better way to illustrate his point that victories in conflicts between opposing forces more often than not hinge on unforeseeable and random events.

Actually, I would've liked a larger role for Midge.


Seymour tops again, 01 May 2008
I've read most of Seymours novels. Most are great reads, a few are average, but I have to say this is one of the best. Great storyline with some vivid and harrowing parts which remained with me long after the book was finished. Children charging over minefields in a hail of bullets and the "fitting" of the waistcoat scene are just a couple. Must have read the last half of the book in a few hours.
Don't look for anything new from Seymour in this one. All the classic elements are here, but its the way he tells em.

Please -no more!, 06 Nov 2007
Well I have read two of Gerald Seymour's books and I have no desire to read a third.
There is a trait in his writing of over padding the text and repeating information.
These books to me are weak.Just a flog to get from cover to cover.The plot is obvious and poorly conceived.
The only parts of the books I liked were the diary entries from the spanish civil war.
The final nail for me was the realisation of the plot strand to do with the used car buyer was utter nonsense!!
Really!
If this is the best -lord help us.....

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

On top of his game, 03 Sep 2008
If Gerald Seymour was not quite so populist he would probably get greater plaudits for his work.

Having said that, his work is topical &, surprisingly for a populist novelist, almost prosaic.

This book marks a slight change in approach from his norm as the sub plot carries within it an almost mirror image of today's terrorist in the form of a freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil war. Certainly food for thought.

A cracking read as ever.

Very Good, but no real build up, 28 May 2008
This book kept me reading from start to finish, and i was never bored. But saying that there was no build up to the final sequence and even then i felt it was all over too quickly, some of the characters were comepletely forgotten. Other than that this was a very enjoyable book

Perhaps Seymour tried a little too hard on this one, 23 May 2008
Gerald Seymour is, and will likely remain, my favorite author of potboilers based on contemporary international tensions and conflicts. But, my reaction to THE WALKING DEAD was that perhaps he tried a little too hard with the secondary plot and a superabundance of characters in this one. Sometimes, simpler is better. What could have been a lean and mean thriller is rendered mean and flabby.

The primary plot features the Scorpion, a facilitator of suicide bombing missions, who's recruited the young Saudi medical student, Ibrahim Hussein, to carry an explosive vest into the heart of England. Helping the pair are the Engineer, an old friend of the Scorpion who builds the bombs, plus a deep cover cell of naturalized Brits of foreign heritage who've been recruited by local imams into the jihadist cause: Faria, Khalid, Ramzi, Syed, and Jamal. Opposing them are Dickie Naylor, five days from retirement, who supervises the MI6 desk charged with intercepting overseas-born, foreign-based suicide terrorists, and Joe Hegner, an FBI agent from the Riyadh station previously blinded by an Islamic martyr's blast. Then there's the ambitious Mary Reakes, Dickie's assistant, who's already measuring Naylor's office for redecoration. Flown in from their farm in the Inner Hebrides are Xavier Boniface and Donald Clydesdale, former colleagues of Dickie's in Army Intelligence and experts at "taking the gloves off" during enhanced interrogation techniques. Finally, there's Midge, a spaniel trained to sniff-out explosives.

In the secondary plot, we have Ozzie and Ollie Curtis, brothers on trial for the armed robbery of a jewelry store. Their shady solicitor is Nat Wilson, who arranges for Benny "the Nobbler" Edwards to bribe one of the jurors, Julian Wright, to deadlock the panel's verdict. As the trial winds down, the jurors are sequestered and placed behind a protective shield of officers, one of whom is David Banks, seconded from the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service after falling out of favor with his boss and ostracized by his professional colleagues. Banks, a loner, is obsessed with the diary of his great-uncle, Cecil Darke, who penned the journal during his time fighting with the communists during the Spanish Civil War.

Further out on the periphery of the story are George Marriot, a crippled ex-bounty hunter that once tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Steve Vickers, a city tour guide, Avril Harris, an ER nurse with car problems, and Lee Donkin, a drug addict and petty thief. All four are residents of Luton.

Seymour's strength has always been making his characters, particularly the protagonists, ordinary folks with everyday problems who manage to muddle through and save the day, or at least not lose it, at the world's gritty and grotty edges. In THE WALKING DEAD, the gritty and grotty edge is Luton north of London. But, then, I gather that many Englishmen wouldn't disagree with that assessment. Not having been there, I couldn't say.

In any case, the primary story line has all the elements necessary to make an excellent thriller and, for me, it got to the point where the occasional textual diversions to the subplot were just plain annoying inasmuch as the latter totally lacked the substance and suspense of the former. Granted, Banks eventually bridges the gap between the two to become a key player in the novel's conclusion. However, I couldn't help but wish that the author had found a better way to illustrate his point that victories in conflicts between opposing forces more often than not hinge on unforeseeable and random events.

Actually, I would've liked a larger role for Midge.


Seymour tops again, 01 May 2008
I've read most of Seymours novels. Most are great reads, a few are average, but I have to say this is one of the best. Great storyline with some vivid and harrowing parts which remained with me long after the book was finished. Children charging over minefields in a hail of bullets and the "fitting" of the waistcoat scene are just a couple. Must have read the last half of the book in a few hours.
Don't look for anything new from Seymour in this one. All the classic elements are here, but its the way he tells em.

Please -no more!, 06 Nov 2007
Well I have read two of Gerald Seymour's books and I have no desire to read a third.
There is a trait in his writing of over padding the text and repeating information.
These books to me are weak.Just a flog to get from cover to cover.The plot is obvious and poorly conceived.
The only parts of the books I liked were the diary entries from the spanish civil war.
The final nail for me was the realisation of the plot strand to do with the used car buyer was utter nonsense!!
Really!
If this is the best -lord help us.....

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

Holly goes to the wire, 09 Feb 2006
In ARCHANGEL, the Cold War is still frigid.

Oleg Demyonov, a convicted Soviet spy, suffers a fatal heart attack in Her Majesty's prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He was soon to be exchanged for Michael Holly, and the deal is now off.

Holly, an engineer for an English manufacturing company, was recruited by MI6 to deliver a clandestine package on his next business trip to Moscow. A piece of cake, according to his Secret Intelligence Service recruiter. But Holly was caught and convicted of espionage. Now, the swap for Demyonov off, Holly is sent to a Correctional Labor Colony in the heart of the USSR for 14 years. Because Holly was born Mikhail Holovich of Russian parents who'd escaped to Britain after WWII, he's classed as a Russian - a traitor - for the purpose of imprisonment. It's to be Camp 3, Zone 1(Strict Regime).

Back in the UK, the head of MI6 charges Alan Millet, Holly's recruiter, with investigating Michael's background. Is his agent likely to crack under continued interrogation and embarrass Her Majesty's government? As Millet discovers the mettle of the man he sent into harm's way, the reader begins to feel sorry for Michael's gaolers.

In Camp 3, the resident Political Officer, KGB Captain Yuri Rudakov, sees Holly as a giant step up the career ladder if he can extract from the new prisoner the confession the Moscow bumblers couldn't get. In the meantime, Michael fires the first shot in his own personal war with a plastic baggie of machine oil, the page from a magazine, and some coal dust.

This is the best of the several Gerald Seymour thrillers I've devoured to date. The reader's sympathies are focused solely on Holly and are rarely sidetracked, though one is tempted to feel an occasional pang of compassion for Millet and (even!) Rudakov.

As I've stated before, the charm of Seymour's novels is that he doesn't deal in absolutes of right or wrong. His venues of conflict are patterned in shades of gray. As Holly rattles the bars of his cage, both he and the reader question the moral responsibility of his actions as the consequences for his fellow prisoners mounts. This is good stuff that transcends the bulk of the genre.

Holly goes to the wire, 24 Feb 2003
In ARCHANGEL, the Cold War is still frigid.

Oleg Demyonov, a convicted Soviet spy, suffers a fatal heart attack in Her Majesty's prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He was soon to be exchanged for Michael Holly, and the deal is now off.

Holly, an engineer for an English manufacturing company, was recruited by MI6 to deliver a clandestine package on his next business trip to Moscow. A piece of cake, according to his Secret Intelligence Service recruiter. But Holly was caught and convicted of espionage. Now, the swap for Demyonov off, Holly is sent to a Correctional Labor Colony in the heart of the USSR for 14 years. Because Holly was born Mikhail Holovich of Russian parents who'd escaped to Britain after WWII, he's classed as a Russian — a traitor — for the purpose of imprisonment. It's to be Camp 3, Zone 1(Strict Regime).

Back in the UK, the head of MI6 charges Alan Millet, Holly's recruiter, with investigating Michael's background. Is his agent likely to crack under continued interrogation and embarrass Her Majesty's government? As Millet discovers the mettle of the man he sent into harm's way, the reader begins to feel sorry for Michael's gaolers.

In Camp 3, the resident Political Officer, KGB Captain Yuri Rudakov, sees Holly as a giant step up the career ladder if he can extract from the new prisoner the confession the Moscow bumblers couldn't get. In the meantime, Michael fires the first shot in his own personal war with a plastic baggie of machine oil, the page from a magazine, and some coal dust.

This is the best of the several Gerald Seymour thrillers I've devoured to date. The reader's sympathies are focused solely on Holly and are rarely sidetracked, though one is tempted to feel an occasional pang of compassion for Millet and (even!) Rudakov.

As I've stated before, the charm of Seymour's novels is that he doesn't deal in absolutes of right or wrong. His venues of conflict are patterned in shades of gray. As Holly rattles the bars of his cage, both he and the reader question the moral responsibility of his actions as the consequences for his fellow prisoners mounts. This is good stuff that transcends the bulk of the genre.

With delicious anticipation, I contemplate the seven other Seymour books lined up on my shelf to be read.

Superb , One of his best, 11 Aug 2001
This book is quite spectactular. It revolves around Michael Holly who is arrested in the USSR whilst doing an errand for the British Intelligence Service, MI6. Imprisoned for 15 years he refuses to lie down and without a doubt once you read the book you will aspire to be Michael Holly. The Book records Holly's acts of defiance in his gulag which include escape and recapture and climaxes in an enthralling uprising within his camp.

thought provoking thriller, 20 Nov 2000
...In the first place let me say that I love Gerald Seymour. He is quite simply one of the greatest thriller writers of all time, comparable to Graham Greene, and this is in many ways his best book. And I, as much as anyone, believe that we in the West are different. In my heart, I desperately want to believe that we would behave like Michael Holly. (And a part of me is paranoid enough to believe that eventually push will come to shove and we'll find out. Isn't that the unspoken reason that we all feel a little queasy about the Democrats newfound mania for gun control? When the black helicopters start circling, don't we all want to face them with a gun in our hands and not go quietly into that good night?) But I have to admit that I am somewhat skeptical. It seems somehow too facile to assume that one iron willed Englishman would suffice to bring the mill of communism grinding to a halt, in however small a corner of the USSR. Seymour too seems to recognize this. Michael Holly is a hero in the tradition of Cool Hand Luke and RP McMurphy (see Orrin's review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Interestingly, all three of them rebel against repressive authority and simply by force of personality rally reluctant fellow inmates to their cause but ultimately fail, before passing into the realm of myth. They seem to embody a fundamentally pessimistic, but not necessarily wrong, belief that while we aspire to be like these rebels, in the end most folks will not succeed in emulating them and the system will win out. I hope that we are made of sterner stuff and, therefore, I am a sucker for this kind of aspirational literature.

GRADE: A+

Seymour's Best!, 17 Jan 1999
Michael Holly is an ordinary man caught involuntarily in the web of the Cold War. As an amateur spy he is caught and imprisoned in Siberia. His refusal to give in is the gripping theme of the book. What havoc he wreaks! Perhaps it panders to my (very english) identification with the underdog.

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

On top of his game, 03 Sep 2008
If Gerald Seymour was not quite so populist he would probably get greater plaudits for his work.

Having said that, his work is topical &, surprisingly for a populist novelist, almost prosaic.

This book marks a slight change in approach from his norm as the sub plot carries within it an almost mirror image of today's terrorist in the form of a freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil war. Certainly food for thought.

A cracking read as ever.

Very Good, but no real build up, 28 May 2008
This book kept me reading from start to finish, and i was never bored. But saying that there was no build up to the final sequence and even then i felt it was all over too quickly, some of the characters were comepletely forgotten. Other than that this was a very enjoyable book

Perhaps Seymour tried a little too hard on this one, 23 May 2008
Gerald Seymour is, and will likely remain, my favorite author of potboilers based on contemporary international tensions and conflicts. But, my reaction to THE WALKING DEAD was that perhaps he tried a little too hard with the secondary plot and a superabundance of characters in this one. Sometimes, simpler is better. What could have been a lean and mean thriller is rendered mean and flabby.

The primary plot features the Scorpion, a facilitator of suicide bombing missions, who's recruited the young Saudi medical student, Ibrahim Hussein, to carry an explosive vest into the heart of England. Helping the pair are the Engineer, an old friend of the Scorpion who builds the bombs, plus a deep cover cell of naturalized Brits of foreign heritage who've been recruited by local imams into the jihadist cause: Faria, Khalid, Ramzi, Syed, and Jamal. Opposing them are Dickie Naylor, five days from retirement, who supervises the MI6 desk charged with intercepting overseas-born, foreign-based suicide terrorists, and Joe Hegner, an FBI agent from the Riyadh station previously blinded by an Islamic martyr's blast. Then there's the ambitious Mary Reakes, Dickie's assistant, who's already measuring Naylor's office for redecoration. Flown in from their farm in the Inner Hebrides are Xavier Boniface and Donald Clydesdale, former colleagues of Dickie's in Army Intelligence and experts at "taking the gloves off" during enhanced interrogation techniques. Finally, there's Midge, a spaniel trained to sniff-out explosives.

In the secondary plot, we have Ozzie and Ollie Curtis, brothers on trial for the armed robbery of a jewelry store. Their shady solicitor is Nat Wilson, who arranges for Benny "the Nobbler" Edwards to bribe one of the jurors, Julian Wright, to deadlock the panel's verdict. As the trial winds down, the jurors are sequestered and placed behind a protective shield of officers, one of whom is David Banks, seconded from the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service after falling out of favor with his boss and ostracized by his professional colleagues. Banks, a loner, is obsessed with the diary of his great-uncle, Cecil Darke, who penned the journal during his time fighting with the communists during the Spanish Civil War.

Further out on the periphery of the story are George Marriot, a crippled ex-bounty hunter that once tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Steve Vickers, a city tour guide, Avril Harris, an ER nurse with car problems, and Lee Donkin, a drug addict and petty thief. All four are residents of Luton.

Seymour's strength has always been making his characters, particularly the protagonists, ordinary folks with everyday problems who manage to muddle through and save the day, or at least not lose it, at the world's gritty and grotty edges. In THE WALKING DEAD, the gritty and grotty edge is Luton north of London. But, then, I gather that many Englishmen wouldn't disagree with that assessment. Not having been there, I couldn't say.

In any case, the primary story line has all the elements necessary to make an excellent thriller and, for me, it got to the point where the occasional textual diversions to the subplot were just plain annoying inasmuch as the latter totally lacked the substance and suspense of the former. Granted, Banks eventually bridges the gap between the two to become a key player in the novel's conclusion. However, I couldn't help but wish that the author had found a better way to illustrate his point that victories in conflicts between opposing forces more often than not hinge on unforeseeable and random events.

Actually, I would've liked a larger role for Midge.


Seymour tops again, 01 May 2008
I've read most of Seymours novels. Most are great reads, a few are average, but I have to say this is one of the best. Great storyline with some vivid and harrowing parts which remained with me long after the book was finished. Children charging over minefields in a hail of bullets and the "fitting" of the waistcoat scene are just a couple. Must have read the last half of the book in a few hours.
Don't look for anything new from Seymour in this one. All the classic elements are here, but its the way he tells em.

Please -no more!, 06 Nov 2007
Well I have read two of Gerald Seymour's books and I have no desire to read a third.
There is a trait in his writing of over padding the text and repeating information.
These books to me are weak.Just a flog to get from cover to cover.The plot is obvious and poorly conceived.
The only parts of the books I liked were the diary entries from the spanish civil war.
The final nail for me was the realisation of the plot strand to do with the used car buyer was utter nonsense!!
Really!
If this is the best -lord help us.....

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

Holly goes to the wire, 09 Feb 2006
In ARCHANGEL, the Cold War is still frigid.

Oleg Demyonov, a convicted Soviet spy, suffers a fatal heart attack in Her Majesty's prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He was soon to be exchanged for Michael Holly, and the deal is now off.

Holly, an engineer for an English manufacturing company, was recruited by MI6 to deliver a clandestine package on his next business trip to Moscow. A piece of cake, according to his Secret Intelligence Service recruiter. But Holly was caught and convicted of espionage. Now, the swap for Demyonov off, Holly is sent to a Correctional Labor Colony in the heart of the USSR for 14 years. Because Holly was born Mikhail Holovich of Russian parents who'd escaped to Britain after WWII, he's classed as a Russian - a traitor - for the purpose of imprisonment. It's to be Camp 3, Zone 1(Strict Regime).

Back in the UK, the head of MI6 charges Alan Millet, Holly's recruiter, with investigating Michael's background. Is his agent likely to crack under continued interrogation and embarrass Her Majesty's government? As Millet discovers the mettle of the man he sent into harm's way, the reader begins to feel sorry for Michael's gaolers.

In Camp 3, the resident Political Officer, KGB Captain Yuri Rudakov, sees Holly as a giant step up the career ladder if he can extract from the new prisoner the confession the Moscow bumblers couldn't get. In the meantime, Michael fires the first shot in his own personal war with a plastic baggie of machine oil, the page from a magazine, and some coal dust.

This is the best of the several Gerald Seymour thrillers I've devoured to date. The reader's sympathies are focused solely on Holly and are rarely sidetracked, though one is tempted to feel an occasional pang of compassion for Millet and (even!) Rudakov.

As I've stated before, the charm of Seymour's novels is that he doesn't deal in absolutes of right or wrong. His venues of conflict are patterned in shades of gray. As Holly rattles the bars of his cage, both he and the reader question the moral responsibility of his actions as the consequences for his fellow prisoners mounts. This is good stuff that transcends the bulk of the genre.

Holly goes to the wire, 24 Feb 2003
In ARCHANGEL, the Cold War is still frigid.

Oleg Demyonov, a convicted Soviet spy, suffers a fatal heart attack in Her Majesty's prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He was soon to be exchanged for Michael Holly, and the deal is now off.

Holly, an engineer for an English manufacturing company, was recruited by MI6 to deliver a clandestine package on his next business trip to Moscow. A piece of cake, according to his Secret Intelligence Service recruiter. But Holly was caught and convicted of espionage. Now, the swap for Demyonov off, Holly is sent to a Correctional Labor Colony in the heart of the USSR for 14 years. Because Holly was born Mikhail Holovich of Russian parents who'd escaped to Britain after WWII, he's classed as a Russian — a traitor — for the purpose of imprisonment. It's to be Camp 3, Zone 1(Strict Regime).

Back in the UK, the head of MI6 charges Alan Millet, Holly's recruiter, with investigating Michael's background. Is his agent likely to crack under continued interrogation and embarrass Her Majesty's government? As Millet discovers the mettle of the man he sent into harm's way, the reader begins to feel sorry for Michael's gaolers.

In Camp 3, the resident Political Officer, KGB Captain Yuri Rudakov, sees Holly as a giant step up the career ladder if he can extract from the new prisoner the confession the Moscow bumblers couldn't get. In the meantime, Michael fires the first shot in his own personal war with a plastic baggie of machine oil, the page from a magazine, and some coal dust.

This is the best of the several Gerald Seymour thrillers I've devoured to date. The reader's sympathies are focused solely on Holly and are rarely sidetracked, though one is tempted to feel an occasional pang of compassion for Millet and (even!) Rudakov.

As I've stated before, the charm of Seymour's novels is that he doesn't deal in absolutes of right or wrong. His venues of conflict are patterned in shades of gray. As Holly rattles the bars of his cage, both he and the reader question the moral responsibility of his actions as the consequences for his fellow prisoners mounts. This is good stuff that transcends the bulk of the genre.

With delicious anticipation, I contemplate the seven other Seymour books lined up on my shelf to be read.

Superb , One of his best, 11 Aug 2001
This book is quite spectactular. It revolves around Michael Holly who is arrested in the USSR whilst doing an errand for the British Intelligence Service, MI6. Imprisoned for 15 years he refuses to lie down and without a doubt once you read the book you will aspire to be Michael Holly. The Book records Holly's acts of defiance in his gulag which include escape and recapture and climaxes in an enthralling uprising within his camp.

thought provoking thriller, 20 Nov 2000
...In the first place let me say that I love Gerald Seymour. He is quite simply one of the greatest thriller writers of all time, comparable to Graham Greene, and this is in many ways his best book. And I, as much as anyone, believe that we in the West are different. In my heart, I desperately want to believe that we would behave like Michael Holly. (And a part of me is paranoid enough to believe that eventually push will come to shove and we'll find out. Isn't that the unspoken reason that we all feel a little queasy about the Democrats newfound mania for gun control? When the black helicopters start circling, don't we all want to face them with a gun in our hands and not go quietly into that good night?) But I have to admit that I am somewhat skeptical. It seems somehow too facile to assume that one iron willed Englishman would suffice to bring the mill of communism grinding to a halt, in however small a corner of the USSR. Seymour too seems to recognize this. Michael Holly is a hero in the tradition of Cool Hand Luke and RP McMurphy (see Orrin's review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Interestingly, all three of them rebel against repressive authority and simply by force of personality rally reluctant fellow inmates to their cause but ultimately fail, before passing into the realm of myth. They seem to embody a fundamentally pessimistic, but not necessarily wrong, belief that while we aspire to be like these rebels, in the end most folks will not succeed in emulating them and the system will win out. I hope that we are made of sterner stuff and, therefore, I am a sucker for this kind of aspirational literature.

GRADE: A+

Seymour's Best!, 17 Jan 1999
Michael Holly is an ordinary man caught involuntarily in the web of the Cold War. As an amateur spy he is caught and imprisoned in Siberia. His refusal to give in is the gripping theme of the book. What havoc he wreaks! Perhaps it panders to my (very english) identification with the underdog.

Harry's Game from a British Soldier, 17 Feb 2006
This book is absolutely fantastic. Brilliantly detailed characters, excellent plot which is well researched and with lots of truths from the situation in NI at the time.

Shatteringly brilliant.

The classic Gerald Seymour thriller., 31 Jul 2005
written in 1975 at the height of violence in Ulster this was the superb first novel by ITN reporter Gerald Seymour.
Hard hitting and uncompromising, which would be the hallmark of his new career,Seymour blends high politics with thrilling tension and action sequences.
An IRA hitman shoots dead a Government Minister.The British Prime Minister orders the intellegence service to hunt the killer down and Harry Brown is the soldier chosen to go to Belfast and immerse himself into the catholic community undercover to flush the assassin out.
Seymour handles the politics well, his characters speaking real believable diologue not sterio-typing as lesser skilled author's would do.
Seymour has since become a master at telling it like it is, his novels pull no punches and often have downbeat endings.
This was the book that launched his very successful second career. This novel hooks you and will not let go.

Interesting insight into the troubles, 06 Dec 2000
Obviously well researched; this is the story of the assassination of a minister by the IRA, and the subsequent hunting of the killer by an undercover agent.

Though set during the height of the troubles (and now dated politically and technologically) it is still a fascinating study of a man deep undercover and how hunter and prey converge. An excellent read.

A tight and gripping story, 18 Jul 1999
Harry's Game is the first, and best, novel of the war in Ulster. All the characters who matter (all four) are beautifully and clearly drawn, the plot is faultless and the ending is shattering.

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

On top of his game, 03 Sep 2008
If Gerald Seymour was not quite so populist he would probably get greater plaudits for his work.

Having said that, his work is topical &, surprisingly for a populist novelist, almost prosaic.

This book marks a slight change in approach from his norm as the sub plot carries within it an almost mirror image of today's terrorist in the form of a freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil war. Certainly food for thought.

A cracking read as ever.

Very Good, but no real build up, 28 May 2008
This book kept me reading from start to finish, and i was never bored. But saying that there was no build up to the final sequence and even then i felt it was all over too quickly, some of the characters were comepletely forgotten. Other than that this was a very enjoyable book

Perhaps Seymour tried a little too hard on this one, 23 May 2008
Gerald Seymour is, and will likely remain, my favorite author of potboilers based on contemporary international tensions and conflicts. But, my reaction to THE WALKING DEAD was that perhaps he tried a little too hard with the secondary plot and a superabundance of characters in this one. Sometimes, simpler is better. What could have been a lean and mean thriller is rendered mean and flabby.

The primary plot features the Scorpion, a facilitator of suicide bombing missions, who's recruited the young Saudi medical student, Ibrahim Hussein, to carry an explosive vest into the heart of England. Helping the pair are the Engineer, an old friend of the Scorpion who builds the bombs, plus a deep cover cell of naturalized Brits of foreign heritage who've been recruited by local imams into the jihadist cause: Faria, Khalid, Ramzi, Syed, and Jamal. Opposing them are Dickie Naylor, five days from retirement, who supervises the MI6 desk charged with intercepting overseas-born, foreign-based suicide terrorists, and Joe Hegner, an FBI agent from the Riyadh station previously blinded by an Islamic martyr's blast. Then there's the ambitious Mary Reakes, Dickie's assistant, who's already measuring Naylor's office for redecoration. Flown in from their farm in the Inner Hebrides are Xavier Boniface and Donald Clydesdale, former colleagues of Dickie's in Army Intelligence and experts at "taking the gloves off" during enhanced interrogation techniques. Finally, there's Midge, a spaniel trained to sniff-out explosives.

In the secondary plot, we have Ozzie and Ollie Curtis, brothers on trial for the armed robbery of a jewelry store. Their shady solicitor is Nat Wilson, who arranges for Benny "the Nobbler" Edwards to bribe one of the jurors, Julian Wright, to deadlock the panel's verdict. As the trial winds down, the jurors are sequestered and placed behind a protective shield of officers, one of whom is David Banks, seconded from the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service after falling out of favor with his boss and ostracized by his professional colleagues. Banks, a loner, is obsessed with the diary of his great-uncle, Cecil Darke, who penned the journal during his time fighting with the communists during the Spanish Civil War.

Further out on the periphery of the story are George Marriot, a crippled ex-bounty hunter that once tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Steve Vickers, a city tour guide, Avril Harris, an ER nurse with car problems, and Lee Donkin, a drug addict and petty thief. All four are residents of Luton.

Seymour's strength has always been making his characters, particularly the protagonists, ordinary folks with everyday problems who manage to muddle through and save the day, or at least not lose it, at the world's gritty and grotty edges. In THE WALKING DEAD, the gritty and grotty edge is Luton north of London. But, then, I gather that many Englishmen wouldn't disagree with that assessment. Not having been there, I couldn't say.

In any case, the primary story line has all the elements necessary to make an excellent thriller and, for me, it got to the point where the occasional textual diversions to the subplot were just plain annoying inasmuch as the latter totally lacked the substance and suspense of the former. Granted, Banks eventually bridges the gap between the two to become a key player in the novel's conclusion. However, I couldn't help but wish that the author had found a better way to illustrate his point that victories in conflicts between opposing forces more often than not hinge on unforeseeable and random events.

Actually, I would've liked a larger role for Midge.


Seymour tops again, 01 May 2008
I've read most of Seymours novels. Most are great reads, a few are average, but I have to say this is one of the best. Great storyline with some vivid and harrowing parts which remained with me long after the book was finished. Children charging over minefields in a hail of bullets and the "fitting" of the waistcoat scene are just a couple. Must have read the last half of the book in a few hours.
Don't look for anything new from Seymour in this one. All the classic elements are here, but its the way he tells em.

Please -no more!, 06 Nov 2007
Well I have read two of Gerald Seymour's books and I have no desire to read a third.
There is a trait in his writing of over padding the text and repeating information.
These books to me are weak.Just a flog to get from cover to cover.The plot is obvious and poorly conceived.
The only parts of the books I liked were the diary entries from the spanish civil war.
The final nail for me was the realisation of the plot strand to do with the used car buyer was utter nonsense!!
Really!
If this is the best -lord help us.....

Distinctively Seymour - the best in the world, 27 Aug 2008
Seymour writes serious and highly compelling thrillers which illuminate important parts of modern life that are often ignored or hidden. Here he deals with the terrifying potential interactions among organised crime, fundamentalism Islamic terrorism, and disaffected ex-Soviet military officers with access to nuclear weapons.

It has the usual Seymour hallmarks. He constructs several different threads which are woven into a powerful climax; here the use of retrospective narratives are unusual for him, but they fit well. Several different perspectives are provided, and though Seymour shies away from direct comment on moral issues there is, as is normal in his books, a strong sense of right and wrong. The writing is vivid and powerful, with several scenes and characters lingering in the memory long after the book is finished. The dialogue is sparse and stylised, sometimes slightly too much so for my liking, but I think this does add to the relentless toughness of the writing.

Timebomb also has the extreme unputdownable quality which all Seymour books have - just about the most addictive writer out there. Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth share this quality but few others have it to this degree.

Strongly recommended for those who like books at the heavyweight end of the thriller spectrum. Seymour has all the qualities a reader wants here and for me he remains at the no. 1 position in the world.



Rubbish, 19 Aug 2008
I have enjoyed a number of this author's book but this one was very disappointing. I struggled to finish the book - Weak plot and extremely boring

biggest load of rubbish ever, 09 Jul 2008
Sorry I forked out money for this. Total lack of continuity. No real plot and very badly written. So disappointing.

Slow start....then grips like a vice., 30 Jun 2008
Gerald Seymour's rich vein of form continues with his latest novel.Set in the present day it is a thriller about the supply and purchase of a former soviet dirty bomb and British Intellegence efforts to prevent a disaster from happening. This novel does begin slowly, partly because Seymour has assembled a vast cast of characters in this book and it takes the first 100 hundred pages or so for the strands to pull together.Every so often Seymour writes a novel that I just can't get into ('Traitors Kiss' being the last) and I feared that this might be such a book.
Seymour uses a writing style that it weighty narative and little dialogue, the characters are as ever deeply layered and complex.The plotting is tight and has a stronger grip on the reader as the pace and tension increases and all within his standard 20 chapters.
His lead Character Carrick is simular to other Seymour characters so far as that he is a troubled loner sent into a dangerous situation undercover, a ploy that Seymour used in his first novel 'Harry's Game ' and continued with books such as 'The Jouneyman Tailor' 'Killing Ground' and 'The Untouchable'.
This is Seymour's 25th novel in 33 years. Few writers, if any have kept up such a high standard of work for so long. He is in my opinion the best spy thriller writer at this time.

Compelling - but not in the usual way, 16 Jun 2008
I looked forward to this latest Gerald Seymour novel and was delighted when it arrived.

In common with many other of Seymour's later novels it takes a while to get into the plot. The constant switching between scenes and characters does not make for an easy read. You keep reading because you are sure it is going to "burst into flames" at any moment - and sometimes it does.

The characterisation and the detailed research and scene=setting is unmistakeable Seymour, and thoroughly done - but this novel, for me at least, lacks the compelling development of storyline and plot.

It is a vital part of the plot that it is interwoven with the telling of a horrifying sequence of events in the concentration camps. To be honest I felt this was overdone - but it did make sense in the end.

I will still wait with anticipation the next of Seymour's novels - but this one does not quite stand with his others.

Holly goes to the wire, 09 Feb 2006
In ARCHANGEL, the Cold War is still frigid.

Oleg Demyonov, a convicted Soviet spy, suffers a fatal heart attack in Her Majesty's prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He was soon to be exchanged for Michael Holly, and the deal is now off.

Holly, an engineer for an English manufacturing company, was recruited by MI6 to deliver a clandestine package on his next business trip to Moscow. A piece of cake, according to his Secret Intelligence Service recruiter. But Holly was caught and convicted of espionage. Now, the swap for Demyonov off, Holly is sent to a Correctional Labor Colony in the heart of the USSR for 14 years. Because Holly was born Mikhail Holovich of Russian parents who'd escaped to Britain after WWII, he's classed as a Russian - a traitor - for the purpose of imprisonment. It's to be Camp 3, Zone 1(Strict Regime).

Back in the UK, the head of MI6 charges Alan Millet, Holly's recruiter, with investigating Michael's background. Is his agent likely to crack under continued interrogation and embarrass Her Majesty's government? As Millet discovers the mettle of the man he sent into harm's way, the reader begins to feel sorry for Michael's gaolers.

In Camp 3, the resident Political Officer, KGB Captain Yuri Rudakov, sees Holly as a giant step up the career ladder if he can extract from the new prisoner the confession the Moscow bumblers couldn't get. In the meantime, Michael fires the first shot in his own personal war with a plastic baggie of machine oil, the page from a magazine, and some coal dust.

This is the best of the several Gerald Seymour thrillers I've devoured to date. The reader's sympathies are focused solely on Holly and are rarely sidetracked, though one is tempted to feel an occasional pang of compassion for Millet and (even!) Rudakov.

As I've stated before, the charm of Seymour's novels is that he doesn't deal in absolutes of right or wrong. His venues of conflict are patterned in shades of gray. As Holly rattles the bars of his cage, both he and the reader question the moral responsibility of his actions as the consequences for his fellow prisoners mounts. This is good stuff that transcends the bulk of the genre.

Holly goes to the wire, 24 Feb 2003
In ARCHANGEL, the Cold War is still frigid.

Oleg Demyonov, a convicted Soviet spy, suffers a fatal heart attack in Her Majesty's prison, Wormwood Scrubs. He was soon to be exchanged for Michael Holly, and the deal is now off.

Holly, an engineer for an English manufacturing company, was recruited by MI6 to deliver a clandestine package on his next business trip to Moscow. A piece of cake, according to his Secret Intelligence Service recruiter. But Holly was caught and convicted of espionage. Now, the swap for Demyonov off, Holly is sent to a Correctional Labor Colony in the heart of the USSR for 14 years. Because Holly was born Mikhail Holovich of Russian parents who'd escaped to Britain after WWII, he's classed as a Russian — a traitor — for the purpose of imprisonment. It's to be Camp 3, Zone 1(Strict Regime).

Back in the UK, the head of MI6 charges Alan Millet, Holly's recruiter, with investigating Michael's background. Is his agent likely to crack under continued interrogation and embarrass Her Majesty's government? As Millet discovers the mettle of the man he sent into harm's way, the reader begins to feel sorry for Michael's gaolers.

In Camp 3, the resident Political Officer, KGB Captain Yuri Rudakov, sees Holly as a giant step up the career ladder if he can extract from the new prisoner the confession the Moscow bumblers couldn't get. In the meantime, Michael fires the first shot in his own personal war with a plastic baggie of machine oil, the page from a magazine, and some coal dust.

This is the best of the several Gerald Seymour thrillers I've devoured to date. The reader's sympathies are focused solely on Holly and are rarely sidetracked, though one is tempted to feel an occasional pang of compassion for Millet and (even!) Rudakov.

As I've stated before, the charm of Seymour's novels is that he doesn't deal in absolutes of right or wrong. His venues of conflict are patterned in shades of gray. As Holly rattles the bars of his cage, both he and the reader question the moral responsibility of his actions as the consequences for his fellow prisoners mounts. This is good stuff that transcends the bulk of the genre.

With delicious anticipation, I contemplate the seven other Seymour books lined up on my shelf to be read.

Superb , One of his best, 11 Aug 2001
This book is quite spectactular. It revolves around Michael Holly who is arrested in the USSR whilst doing an errand for the British Intelligence Service, MI6. Imprisoned for 15 years he refuses to lie down and without a doubt once you read the book you will aspire to be Michael Holly. The Book records Holly's acts of defiance in his gulag which include escape and recapture and climaxes in an enthralling uprising within his camp.

thought provoking thriller, 20 Nov 2000
...In the first place let me say that I love Gerald Seymour. He is quite simply one of the greatest thriller writers of all time, comparable to Graham Greene, and this is in many ways his best book. And I, as much as anyone, believe that we in the West are different. In my heart, I desperately want to believe that we would behave like Michael Holly. (And a part of me is paranoid enough to believe that eventually push will come to shove and we'll find out. Isn't that the unspoken reason that we all feel a little queasy about the Democrats newfound mania for gun control? When the black helicopters start circling, don't we all want to face them with a gun in our hands and not go quietly into that good night?) But I have to admit that I am somewhat skeptical. It seems somehow too facile to assume that one iron willed Englishman would suffice to bring the mill of communism grinding to a halt, in however small a corner of the USSR. Seymour too seems to recognize this. Michael Holly is a hero in the tradition of Cool Hand Luke and RP McMurphy (see Orrin's review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Interestingly, all three of them rebel against repressive authority and simply by force of personality rally reluctant fellow inmates to their cause but ultimately fail, before passing into the realm of myth. They seem to embody a fundamentally pessimistic, but not necessarily wrong, belief that while we aspire to be like these rebels, in the end most folks will not succeed in emulating them and the system will win out. I hope that we are made of sterner stuff and, therefore, I am a sucker for this kind of aspirational literature.

GRADE: A+

Seymour's Best!, 17 Jan 1999
Michael Holly is an ordinary man caught involuntarily in the web of the Cold War. As an amateur spy he is caught and imprisoned in Siberia. His refusal to give in is the gripping theme of the book. What havoc he wreaks! Perhaps it panders to my (very english) identification with the underdog.

Harry's Game from a British Soldier, 17 Feb 2006
This book is absolutely fantastic. Brilliantly detailed characters, excellent plot which is well researched and with lots of truths from the situation in NI at the time.

Shatteringly brilliant.

The classic Gerald Seymour thriller., 31 Jul 2005
written in 1975 at the height of violence in Ulster this was the superb first novel by ITN reporter Gerald Seymour.
Hard hitting and uncompromising, which would be the hallmark of his new career,Seymour blends high politics with thrilling tension and action sequences.
An IRA hitman shoots dead a Government Minister.The British Prime Minister orders the intellegence service to hunt the killer down and Harry Brown is the soldier chosen to go to Belfast and immerse himself into the catholic community undercover to flush the assassin out.
Seymour handles the politics well, his characters speaking real believable diologue not sterio-typing as lesser skilled author's would do.
Seymour has since become a master at telling it like it is, his novels pull no punches and often have downbeat endings.
This was the book that launched his very successful second career. This novel hooks you and will not let go.

Interesting insight into the troubles, 06 Dec 2000
Obviously well researched; this is the story of the assassination of a minister by the IRA, and the subsequent hunting of the killer by an undercover agent.

Though set during the height of the troubles (and now dated politically and technologically) it is still a fascinating study of a man deep undercover and how hunter and prey converge. An excellent read.

A tight and gripping story, 18 Jul 1999
Harry's Game is the first, and best, novel of the war in Ulster. All the characters who matter (all four) are beautifully and clearly drawn, the plot is faultless and the ending is shattering.

Great after a slow start, 12 Oct 2008
I laboured through the first 100 pages which was too much scene setting with little action or intrigue. Then the book sizzled as the accused coward 'Kitchen' acts as vigilante working his way up through the hierarchy of the illegal drug chain starting from a grimy London coucil estate. In a parallel plot, a terrorist is being sent on a journey from Eastern Europe to activate cells in England. His route to England uses the drug smuggling rat-run and here in the last 100 pages, the plots collide with Seymour giving a solid ending.

Not what I expected..., 11 Mar 2008
I've read other Gerald Seymour novels and have throughly enjoyed them. On this occasion I was at first a little concerned by the some what snails pace of the story, But the author redeemed himself with the well thought through plot and attention to detail. While writing this review, I would also like to recommend 'The Constantine Legacy' by Andrew Towning.

Redemption, 23 Dec 2007
Gerald Seymour is the only author whose thrillers I savor, both when I contemplate them with delicious anticipation sitting on my shelf awaiting my attention, and when they're being read with the impossible wish that they never end. RAT RUN is the twenty-third offering in a string of books remarkable for their consistent ability to enthrall.

The central villain of this piece is Ricky Capel, who imports heroin into the UK using his brother-in-law's fishing trawler to retrieve caches of the drug attached to a bouy's anchor chain in the North Sea, the heroin being put there by a Hamburg underworld organization headed by the Albanian arch-criminal, Timo Rahman. From Ricky, the drug moves down the chain to the supplier, then the dealer, and finally to the street sellers, two of which vend to the vagrants in the blighted and crime-ridden Amersham housing estate, the home to Malachy Kitchen.

Malachy was once an Army intelligence officer, but was drummed out after being accused of cowardice while on a combat patrol in Iraq, when he apparently deserted his unit after discarding his helmet, flak vest and rifle. Now, disgraced, divorced, psychologically broken, jobless, and reclusive, he lives in Amersham on the public dole, his only friend an old lady, Millie, who lives in the next door apartment and who invites him to tea twice a month. Then, one day, Millie has her purse stolen and is brutally beaten by the estate's two drug sellers. Millie's nephew, an officer with the Criminal Intelligence Service, challenges Kitchen to regain his lost pride and manhood by taking the sellers out of circulation in a manner not open to official law enforcement. Malachy does so, utilizing remembered skills from his service days, and then begins to move back up the chain.

In the meantime, Rahman's organization is taking on a new sort of endeavor, which is to smuggle into England a key al-Qaeda operative, a "coordinator" being sent to activate terror cells comprised of English-born Muslim fanatics. But Frederick Gaunt of MI6, demoted to the Albanian Desk after SIS's faulty intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein's WMDs, has gotten a faint whiff of the plot from a cell phone transmission plucked out of the ether. Gaunt puts his newest agent, young Polly Wilkins at the Prague station, onto the trail of the shadowy Arab as the latter makes his way across Europe's national borders on the clandestine "rat run". Polly herself is on an emotional low, having just been dumped via email by her erstwhile boyfriend, an officer of Her Majesty's Foreign Service stationed in Argentina.

Polly's assignment and Malachy's quest for private redemption cross on a storm-battered beach on an island off Germany's northwest coast.

The stunning brilliance of all of Seymour's plots is that there are no super heroes, only common and unremarkable men and women, sometimes as damaged as Malachy, doing thankless jobs at civilization's grittier and grottier margins, where opposing forces aren't colored so much in black and white as murky shades of gray, and victories, such as they occur at the novels' conclusions, are pyrrhic and fleeting, and a defeat is perhaps only postponed. But the reader will sense that what is fictionally depicted reflects the real battles in the real world