The Corporal's Wife - Softcover

Gerald Seymour

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444758578 ISBN 13: 9781444758573

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks, 2014

Synopsis

An Iranian soldier sits in an MI6 safe house.

He may only be a corporal, but as chauffeur to a top general he knows many secrets, such as the location of nuclear sites.

But the Corporal won't talk unless they bring his wife out of Iran, too.

So the SAS are asked to do the job - but they say it's impossible.

Which is how Zach Bennett, a university drop-out recruited for his language skills, and a rag-tag team of three ex-soldiers find themselves on a mission to Tehran. If they are caught, it will mean certain death.

And the Corporal's wife - fiery, independent and beautiful - is not the kind of person Zach was expecting. In fact, she's not like anyone he's ever met in his life.

About this title

Review

Those [Seymour] sends off into dangerous territory are, in fact, his readers. With each book, we enter a dangerous universe, and are totally involved with utterly plausible characters, faced with moral choices that are rarely straightforward . . . The single most important element here is the obsessive Winnie, whose pursuit of revenge for her dead agent is the motor for all that happens. Winnie is a forceful creation, with her burning resentment against those who feel contempt for the way the rest of us live. (Independent)

Once again demonstrating his ability to probe the moral murkiness of the spy trade and create an absorbingly diverse ensemble, Seymour crafts a sophisticated, reader-teasing tale. (The Sunday Times)

[Seymour's] books are rich in the drama of people reacting to events and situations they never could have expected. (Weekend Press, New Zealand)

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)

With Seymour, not only do you get a cracking story deftly told, but you also feel you are learning something. (Birmingham Press)

In a class of his own (The Times on THE WAITING TIME)

one of the modern masters of the craft (Daily Mail on THE COLLABORATOR)

Book Description

A nail-biting thriller about a small British team of men sent into Iran to smuggle out a feisty, independent, beautiful young woman.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1444758578
• ISBN 13: 9781444758573
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432