Product Description

Word is out that an IRA informer is hiding out on the mountains of County Tyrone, but whilst MI5 must protect him and keep him alive at all costs, the IRA need to find him and silence him - forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95455 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 461 pages

From the Publisher
A modern classic from one of the great thriller writers of our era.

From the Back Cover
In the villages and on the mountains of County Tyrone, in the heartland of the Provisional IRA's most active Brigade, the golden rule is 'Hear nothing, see nothing, know nothing'. To collaborate is to invite an inescapable death sentence.

But rules are made to be broken and there is word on the street that inside the Brigade is a tout, an informer, someone who has taken the Crown's gold. When he is uncovered, he will be interrogated, tortured, then hooded and shot.

Gary Brennard, an inexperienced M15 field agent, and Parker, who runs the informer, have to protect their man, codenamed 'Song Bird', at all costs. He is their only access to a fiercely tightknit organisation, the critical asset to hold onto until the stakes are high enough...and if the innocent step into the crossfire, that's just unfortunate.

About the Author
Once a reporter for Independent Television News, Gerald Seymour has lived in the West Country for several years. His bestselling novels include Harry’s Game, The Glory Boys, Field of Blood, Killing Ground, A Line in the Sand, Holding the Zero, The Untouchable, Traitor’s Kiss, The Unknown Soldier, and Rat Run.

Customer Reviews

Just a slip of a girl
Gerald Seymour's novels have transported us to so many places festering with suppurating animosities: the Balkans, Afghanistan, Kurdish Iraq, Italy, the old U.S.S.R., Lebanon, South Africa. In THE JOURNEYMAN TAILOR, we're off to one of the most intractable of Gordian knots, Northern Ireland.

Jon Jo Donnelly, a legend in his own time, is an IRA assassin on undercover assignment in the heart of England with his sniper rifle and cache of explosives. Back in Donnelly's Ulster home town, Song Bird is a British Security Service (MI5) informant embedded in the IRA infrastructure. Gary "Bren" Brennard, a newbie to MI5, is rushed over in short order to Northern Ireland to help run Song Bird after his predecessor's cover is blown.

Jon Jo is killing at will in Britain's hinterland. The PM wants his head on a platter yesterday. MI5's plan is to lure Donnelly back to his farm and family, at which time he can be isolated by Song Bird for elimination by Her Majesty's forces.

The focus of this thriller isn't Jon Jo, Song Bird or Bren. Rather, it's young Cathy Parker, ruefully characterized as "a slip of a thing" by the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, whose ears have been burned by Parker's no-compromise lecture on Song Bird's importance. Cathy is Bren's boss on the ground and the informer's recruiter and chief handler.

In Seymour's other novels that I've read, the primary protagonist's motives are revealed. In Parker's case, we learn little of her background other than she's the renegade daughter of affluent English parents. In the now, she's red-haired, 5 foot 4 inches tall, weighs 8 stone 3 pounds, obsessively driven by her job, idolized by her male peers, backed to the max by her superiors, and affectionately regarded by MI5's otherwise bitter rivals in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Special Air Services. An alpha female that draws males like moths to light. Will Bren's wings get singed?

Since Seymour doesn't repeat a main character in other novels, it's unlikely we're to meet Cathy again. A pity, since, to me at least, she's proved to be one of the author's most engaging creations. Parker aside, however, this riveting book continue's the author's tradition of giving the reader a (presumably) realistic insight into the minds and hearts of the ordinary people who fight the gritty conflicts in the grotty corners of the civilized world where there are no winners and losers - only survivors. This is good stuff - the best of the genre on pulp fiction shelves.

A decent story with some incredulity
Overall this is a readable book and it is really based on a very simple storyline about undercover work and the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland/Ulster. Even so, it's a long book; but I never felt that it dragged in any sense.

I have to say, though, that there were a few things that appeared and stayed and grated on me.

Firstly, Bren, the main male character was physically fit but such a wimp that I could not believe that he would have ended up in the post in Northern Ireland that he did. Moerover, once there, I don't believe he should have stayed: he just wasn't suited to the job as far as I could tell.

Secondly, Parker, the main female character was even more physically fit but we kept being told how tired she was.

Thirdly, I really could not countenance Parker ending up alone in a bar deep inside "enemy territory". She was rumbled by someone in the bar and then half beaten to death. She walked away from the fight and yet she was allowed to carry on her duties There is a real life basis for this character, though, in Capt Robert Nirac, a British soldier with a similar profile, I suppose, but he was killed in similar (?) circumstances.

Fourthly, Bren fell in love with Parker very early in the story and was soppy and wet about it. He managed to achieve his ambition of sleeping with Parker; but only once she'd been badly beaten and was feeling sorry for herself. At no other time did she appear so vulnerable to his schoolboy advances.

So, a decent read. Strip away these problems if they worry you and it will be OK.

The best book i have EVER read
Without doubt this is the best book i have ever read. Gerald Seymour's style of writing means that the reader is constantly at the edge of his seat and is never able to put the book down. The book is excellent at informing the reader about the brutallity of the war in Northern Ireland from brutal IRA bombings in London to SAS ambushes in high streets. The reader never bores as MI5 intensifies its hunt for a top IRA terrorist bombing mainland Britain. To do so a highly trained Intelligence Officer and her inexperienced MI5 assistant must keep their informant-Codename "Songbird" -talking. With a dramatic climax on a Tyrone mountain top this book is superb and its realisim is astounding.