Product Description

A young man starts a journey from a dusty village in Saudi Arabia. He believes it will end with his death in faraway England. For honour, for glory, for victory. If his mission succeeds, he will go to his god a martyr - and many innocents will die with him. For David Banks, an armed protection officer charged with neutralising the growing menace to London's safety, his role is not as clear-cut as it once was. The certainties which ruled his thinking are no longer black and white. Banks has begun to realise that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Never have those distinctions been more dangerous to a police officer with his finger on the trigger - and to those who depend upon him. On a bright spring morning the two men's paths will cross. Before then, their commitment will be shaken by the journeys which take them there. The suicide bomber and the policeman will have equal cause to question the roads they've chosen. Win or lose, neither will be the same again..."The Walking Dead" is a breathtakingly suspenseful thriller about the world in which we live, with all its dangers and complexities. With intelligence and deep understanding, Seymour shows us the choices we are forced to make, and their consequences. It is one of the most excitingly contemporary and relevant novels you will ever read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #354320 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

The Times
'A clever drawing together of disparate strands of different people's lives towards an explosive conclusion'

Daily Telegraph
'As a sprawling novel about the decline of moral courage in society, this is almost Dickensian in ambition'

Financial Times
'Gerald Seymour... is one of the best'

Customer Reviews

Tough, Topical.. Seymour pulls no punches.
Gerald Seymour at the top of his form is, as a political thriller writer hard to beat.
Le Carre shoots from the left and Forsyth from the right but Seymour using his excellent journalistic skills allows his readers to make their own moral judgements about what is done by the powers that be to protect the citizens of this country.
Could there be a more topical novel today than 'The Walking Dead' which concerns the hunt for a suicide bomber in the United Kingdom?

Seymour has constructed a multi layered plot with many different strands that all pull together towards a nail biting climax.
The sub plot about the trial of two gangster brothers and the juror who is ripe for currupting seems to have little to do with the story and yet it becomes a vital part of the plot. Likewise the protection officer who is obsessed with a diary from an International Brigade volunteer from the Spannish civil war, yet it is the skill and the depth with which these characters are written that makes his fiction feel so factual.

The most disturbing area in this book is the depiction of a terror suspect being tortured by British Intellegence officers at a WW2 airfield. Here Seymour poses the reader with the moral question of whether such actions are for the greater good and makes us wonder if they really occur within our democracy and for our protection.

This is a novel that makes YOU think and YOU decide, thankfully without the need for the author to make his own politcal statement....and this is where Seymour always triumphs and has done since his first novel'Harry's Game'.
Topical, tough and as unflinching as ever, as with his previous book'Rat Run' this is Gerald Seymour at his best.

Good but not his best

Seymour is for me the best writer in the genre of topical thrillers. I have read all his books. Once again he gives you a gripping read and keeps one's attention to the end. Mastery of detail is superb, especially on the training and life of armed police, The only flaw i saw was the one quotation error spotted by an earlier reviewer. Good though he is, I think there is some room for improvement. I did not find his Muslim characters terribly convincing when the two main player are motivated by revenge and hatred not religion. Their young British helpers do not seem to have any depth to their characters. What is superbly done is the development of the ethical question as to how far the forces of the state should go in the interrogation of those who may be part of an imminent terror bomb threat as well as the dilemmas faced by our armed police.

Another Blinder
We have to wait so long for each new novel and then we read it two days. Absolute magic in line with all his previous novels.
Dis-associated characters who you know somehow or other will come together at the end. His ability to paint a picture is fantastic.
Highly recommended if you have read any other novel of his. Highly recommended if this would be your first Gerald Seymour - Buy it don't dither - I have now got to wait for the next.