The Foot Soldiers: A Sunday Times Thriller of the Month (Jonas Merrick series)

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The Foot Soldiers: A Sunday Times Thriller of the Month (Jonas Merrick series)

The Foot Soldiers: A Sunday Times Thriller of the Month (Jonas Merrick series)

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Price: £9.9
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An alcoholic, former British Intelligence agent, Jimmy, comes out of retirement to hunt the two of them down and protect the scientist. Lethal, but drunk, he tries to contain inevitable bloodshed. Review Initially a journalist, Gerald joined the Independent Television Network (ITN) in 1963, and forged a successful career. He covered controversial situations such as the Munich Olympics Massacre and Palestinian Militant Groups. This is multi-layered spy-fi at its best, with Seymour showing that even after thirty-seven novels he has lost none of his talent for thrilling plots and creating credible and sympathetic characters, nor his journalist's eye for modern espionage tradecraft and techniques - Shots Magazine Brown’s task is to arrest the assassin, Billy Downes, who is an IRA gunman. By the time Brown arrives in Northern Ireland, Downes has escaped to Belfast. Gerald Seymour has found a good formula for churning out novels almost, it seems, at will. This reader has read many of them over the years and has usually found them current, realistic and well researched. Each are different from one another and on this occasion, this reader thought that even though it was a bit slow in places, the novel itself felt authentic, quite believable with realistic characters and situations. This person thought that he was actually on the bus (in chapter 16) looking over at the park where Jonas and the surveillance team were stationed with Sadie Jilkes badgering the bus driver to stop. Quite an accomplishment by the author.

As a sign of respect for the memorable times we spent together I promise to be understanding, I swear. But this wasn’t our best encounter. And, I’m afraid to say it’s all you, not me; I read in the same iPad, on the same armchair as I read all my other books.

I felt enjoyment at the annual instalment of ‘Gerald Seymour’, and he’s still got literary flexibility and quality flowing from his fingers. I look forward to the next JM instalment Long time readers of Seymour's fabulous secret service novels will remember early books that had sad and depressing endings. When the final chapters became more upbeat I thought somebody must have told Mr. Seymour that he could make the story as dreadfully depressing as he liked but the denouement was to be cheerful or his books would not be published. This is a wonderfully complex and unputdownable tale of defectors, traitors, internal politics or "high jingo" as Michael Connelly would describe it and assassination both actual and character.

But then again, all the characters of the book are mediocre people, bored, tired people just wanting out of whatever they are in; maybe that's the world the author wanted to paint. If so, so be it, but the effect for the reader is certainly not uplifting.

Featured Reviews

He has never lost his journalist's eye for the stories behind the news * The Sunday Times on The Crocodile Hunter * The Glory Boys, published in 1976, was Gerald’s second thriller. It focuses on the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. The novel, which won a nomination for the Edgar Award, begins with three terrorists from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on their way to London to kill Israeli nuclear scientist David Sokarev, who is there to give a lecture. Only one member of the group, Abdel-El-Famy, survives a brush with a three-man hit squad sent by Israeli Intelligence to ambush them.

The story is about counter-intelligence and MI5, which is inherently duller than espionage and MI6 (catching spies is mmore boring than spying), but that was not the problem - the plot was good enough. What I had a hard time to bear with was the protagonist’s characterisation; with the aim of making him look smart and unconventional, the author stretches the protagonist’s habits, customs and idiosyncrasies to such an extreme that he becomes a caricature (almost an OCD type); except that making your dude look like a weirdo does not make him more interesting - to me, at least. By continuing to disguise himself as an idiot, he ends up looking like one. Seymour’s writing is clinical and concise, and often quite dense, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I really like it as an antidote to modern thrillers. The book begins with a Russian Defector handing himself over to MI6 in Denmark and it soon become obvious that the Russians are not only coming for their man but know exactly where he is, with a "Mole" within MI6 being the only explanation. Ask aficionados who is Britain's finest thriller writer, and many would answer the veteran Gerald Seymour * Guardian on Beyond Recall *I was completely gripped by the plot and interdepartmental jealousies and rivalries. I couldn't put it down!' These are some of the questions facing MI6 when a Russian agent hands himself in to them in Denmark. When he is not writing, Gerald fishes, watches sports on TV and walks his dogs. He often grumbles, in jest, that he has little time for these hobbies. Gerald Seymour’s books Harry’s Game



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