THE HEART OF DANGER - Book review

 

Gerald Seymour’s 1995 novel is another one of his authentic thrillers touching upon a gut-wrenching contemporary issue – this time, the Bosnian conflict.

Seymour uses a framing device – an SIS official is reviewing a particular file of events that occurred a couple of years earlier, in 1993. Bill Penn, an MI5 agent who was dismissed, now works as a private investigator – mainly chasing debts and errant husbands and wives. Then he is hired by Mary Braddock. Her daughter Dorrie went missing in 1991 and her body has just been exhumed from a field’s mass grave in former Yugoslovia. Mrs Braddock wants to know how and why Dorrie died.

What begins as a lucrative easy task develops into something darker and more meaningful and moving. Gradually, Penn gets to know the late Dorrie through witness statements. Dorrie’s mother had despaired of her daughter; they’d constantly been at loggerheads. Yet this wasn’t the young woman Penn learned about.

‘It’s always the people who are smug and complacent who send young men across rivers, through minefields, into the heart of danger, and in their arrogance they never pause to consider the consequences.’ (p322)

Despite official censure, Penn goes behind enemy lines in a bid to not only to seek the truth about Dorrie’s brutal death but also to bring to justice the person responsible.

This is a grim tale, with the raw background of a dirty little war that featured genocide and ethnic cleansing. Towards the end it gets extremely tense and harrowing.

Heart-breaking in many instances.

Editorial comment:

Penn uses a mercenary called Ham as a helper. What’s interesting is that Seymour uses an ex-special forces character called Ham in his 2003 thriller Traitor’s Kiss; and not the same guy!

 

TRAITOR'S KISS - Book review

 

It’s a few years since I’ve read any Gerald Seymour thrillers; I’ve had Traitor’s Kiss on my shelf since 2004, its date of paperback publication (originally published 2003). I have yet to be disappointed in one of his novels, and I’m happy to write that this is no exception. Even when some feature a downbeat ending, I’ve appreciated the storytelling, the research, the characters and the honesty in the writing.

It begins in 1998 when a Russian officer hands over a wad of secret papers to a British trawlerman in the port of Murmansk. The papers are delivered to SIS operative Rupert Mowbray; genuine details from Captain Viktor Alexander Archenko, Russian Navy.

Some five years later, a dead drop by the Archenko doesn’t happen. The SIS handlers fear the worst: their contact is blown. But Archenko isn’t, though he has detected security men shadowing him. So begins a race against time – before the net closes in on a useful asset.

Some in the higher echelons of SIS consider the asset is a lost cause. But this goes against Mowbray’s sense of honour: he wants to organise an operation to get Archenko out.

As the Mission Impossible team is unavailable, Mowbray seeks the help of ex-SAS men – Billy, Lofty, Wickso and Ham – to extract Archenko from under the noses of the Russians. Closing in on Archenko is Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Bikov, an experienced interrogator.

At just over 500 pages, this tense thriller is a fast page-turner, all of it believable. Helping Mowbray is Alice, who was at the first clandestine meeting with Archenko all those years ago. She’d fallen in love with him and was now with Mowbray and the extraction team heading for Kaliningrad. All the familiar tropes are here – intelligence hardware, tradecraft, weapons, insider knowledge of the Russian naval system, soul sapping suspense of constantly being aware of being a traitor, the justification for the deceit, the bravery and heroism of the various protagonists.

Highly recommended.