Product Description

A stunning contemporary thriller from a master of the genre

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140191 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

Very Good, but no real build up
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
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
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.