A Deniable Death - Hardcover

Seymour, Gerald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250018803 ISBN 13: 9781250018809

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2013

Synopsis

A page-turning thriller of life and death in the moral maze of the post-9/11 world from the international bestselling author and “best spy novelist ever” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

The rules are simple. Break up your shape. Hide your smell. Never show your silhouette. Check the surfaces of your kit. Space the movements of your team. Use the shadows. Danny “Badger” Baxter has a talent for surveillance. He’s always followed the rules. Until now, they’ve kept him alive.

But now Badger has a bigger job than photographing dissident Northern Irish Republicans in muddy Ulster fields, or Islamic extremists on rainswept Yorkshire moors. MI6 have a plan to assassinate the Engineer—a brilliant maker of Improvised Explosive Devices, the roadside bombs which account for 80% of Allied casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The spooks know he’s planning to leave his home in Iran. They just need to find out when and where he’s traveling.

So Badger finds himself on the wrong side of the Iranian border, burdened with a partner he loathes, lying under a merciless sun in a mosquito-infested marsh, observing the house. If things go wrong, as far as Her Majesty's Government is concerned, his part in the plot is completely deniable. With A Deniable Death, Gerald Seymour expertly explores the moral compromises of the secret world upon which we rely for our everyday security - and the amazing reserves of courage which ordinary people can find in extraordinary circumstances.

A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2013

About this title

Review:

It's a terrific read and one of Seymour's best. (The Sunday Times)

Picking up a novel by Gerald Seymour is like taking a deep breath of fresh air . . . his subject here is the Middle East, presented with a vividness and veracity that makes most of his rivals look footling . . . As always with Seymour, the sense of a minatory foreign landscape is acutely rendered . . . never have the badlands of Iraq been evoked with such oppressive rigour. And how many other writers would have fleshed out the bomb-maker, who would simply represent "evil" in most thrillers? Seymour allows us into the life and consciousness of this man, movingly describing his marriage to a mortally ill woman. When readers get to the nailbiting climax, involving an agonising wait for airborne rescue, they may be wondering why they should bother with any other thriller writer. (Independent)

Seymour is a master of the thriller set on the murky edges of modern war . . . As ever he juggles action, context and suspense with a special-forces level of expertise. How long before he turns to Libya? (i)

Gerald Seymour is the grand-master of the contemporary thriller and Deniable Death is his greatest work yet. Gripping, revealing and meticulously researched, this is a page-turning masterpiece that will literally leave you breathless. (Major Chris Hunter, author of Extreme Risk)

After 28 novels, Seymour's empathy for those he ensnares in his moral minefields remains movingly even-handed. (Daily Telegraph)

gripping thriller (Sun)

Mr Seymour is . . . on form . . . The tradecraft of silent watching and the discomfort, thirst and increasing claustrophobia of the hideout are brought very much to life . . . the grim landscape of the border region and the harsh lives of its inhabitants are skilfully evoked (The Economist (Australia))

Seymour is not one to cut corners. He does his research, thinks hard about his story and gives us richly imagined novels that bristle with authenticity. (Washington Post on THE COLLABORATOR)

Seymour [is] incapable of creating a two-dimensional character' (The Times)

'Discerning thriller readers can safely say that the best practitioner currently working in the UK is the veteran Seymour. He is, quite simply, the most intelligent and accomplished in the current field . . . Here, we have a typically compromised Seymour anti-hero, a masterfully organised globe-spanning narrative and a mass of highly persuasive detail. The Dealer and the Dead is Seymour firing on all cylinders, and his rivals need, once again, to look to their laurels. (Barry Forshaw)

Book Description:

An epic novel of high courage and low cunning, of life and death in the moral maze of the post-9/11 world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1250018803
• ISBN 13: 9781250018809
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 439