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

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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he could make the story as dreadfully depressing as he liked but the denouement was to be cheerful or his books would not be published. The thrilling, yet pragmatic nature of his books continues to draw readers in. The spine-chilling, fictional events he describes, based on his journalistic encounters, are situations readers relate to easily. TV Adaptations Seymour produces the most intelligent writing in the thriller genre * Financial Times on Beyond Recall * JM is a cantankerous and sometimes banal old bug.ger. However, he’s crafted in such a way as to make the story brilliant. His genius is most pleasing, and the tom-foolery with making others believe him dumb, ha!

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.Ask aficionados who is Britain's finest thriller writer, and many would answer the veteran Gerald Seymour * Guardian on Beyond Recall * A cleverly nuanced climax in which tables are unexpectedly turned more than once . . . marks this as a novel of real quality. Top brass * The Times *

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. Also, it was one of the rare times this reader has read a novel and finished it without really liking any of the characters in the story! Yet, even though it was a character driven story, this person still enjoyed the novel immensely. The author , this person thought, was trying to show the grim side of counter-intelligence work (MI5) and the cost it has on their lives. It was through Seymour's powerful writing that he could take a simple storyline and, even with a predictable conclusion, still give the reader a spellbinding story. 4 STARS. GS has produced a book of quality, tenacity and cunning. The ‘hero’ is all manner and levels of many characteristics - too many to list. But, he’s believable, durable and, now, enjoyable. Maybe I'm just burned out on counter terrorism themed thrillers but the Crocodile Hunter is my least favorite Seymour novel that I've read. Not to say it's bad or anything. The novel is certainly above average for the genre but I didn't enjoy it as much as some of his other work. In Denmark a Russian GRU agent Igor approaches an MI6 officer stationed in the country and says he wants to defect. This is a headache for MI6 as they are not benefiting from any intelligence he would have gathered for them as a double agent. Instead there is suspicion as to if he is a genuine defector or not.But while Jonas’s colleagues regard him as scratchy, fastidious, old, he is also ruthless, cunning and brutally pragmatic. And he has a man on the inside: a would-be money-launderer on that wild Spanish coast. A man who has been undercover for so long, he has almost forgotten who he really is. There are two main issues with this book. The first is the lead characters are not very likeable. The second is Seymour's current practice of fixating on a motif which comes across as heavy handed in this novel. 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. This was a mixed bag for me. One could define The Foot Soldiers as deliciously complex and multilayered, someone else as annoyingly fragmented and disjointed; I found the line between the two a rather fine one. The story follows two very separate and parallel threads, and one presumes they will connect in so e way before the end; except they don't... I was completely gripped by the plot and interdepartmental jealousies and rivalries. I couldn’t put it down!’

Stars: ‘The Waiting Time’, ‘Holding the Zero’, ‘The Dealer and the Dead’, ‘’No Mortal Thing’, ‘The Outsiders’, ‘A Deniable Death’, ‘A Damn Serious Business’, ‘Archangel’, ‘No Mortal Thing’, ‘The Crocodile Hunter', 'Foot Soldiers', 'The Collaborator’, ‘Killing Ground’, ’The Journeyman Tailor’, ’Tinker, Taylor, Soldier Spy’, ‘Field of Blood’, ���Harry’s Game’. (17).How he does it and maintains his forensic knowledge of tradecraft and the inner working of the murky world of spies and traitors I hate to think but it is hard to think of many other writers who can match his overall body of work. A boon of Gerald’s novels is that he manages to thrill readers without being unrealistic. Though his fast-paced novels are full of suspense, they are down-to-earth. Gerald uses his experiences to make the ongoing military conflict in the places where he has worked real for his readers. Galicia: an entire community waits on the windswept edge of Europe for the delivery of four tonnes of cocaine, brought across the ocean in an almost unbelievable craft.