A Deniable Death

By GERALD SEYMOUR

Published by Hodder & Stoughton, RRP $34.99,m 12 July 2011

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

C.R.O.P.: Covert Rural Observation Posts are places where men like Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter hide for endless, motionless hours, secretly recording criminal or terrorist activity.

But now Badger has a bigger job than photographing dissident Republicans in muddy Ulster fields or Islamic extremists on rain-swept Yorkshire moors.

I.E.D.: Improvised Explosive Devices are the roadside bombs which account for 80% of British casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MI6 have a plan to assassinate the leading maker of these weapons when he leaves his hour in Iran to visit Europe. But first, they need to know when he is leaving, and where he is going.

So it is that Badger finds himself on the wrong side of the Iranian border, lumbered with a partner he loathes, lying under a merciless sun in a mosquito-infested marsh, observing the house. And knowing that if they are caught, Her Majesty’s Government will deny all knowledge of them. Welcome to A Deniable Death.

About the Author

Gerald Seymour spent fifteen years as an international television news reporter with ITN, covering Vietnam and the Middle East, and specializing in terrorism across the world. Seymour was on the streets of Londonderry on the afternoon of Bloody Sunday, and was a witness to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Seymour’s first novel was the acclaimed thriller Harry’s Game, set in Belfast. He has since written twenty-four more bestselling novels, of which six have been filmed for television in the UK and US.

Gerald Seymour is at the very top level of British thriller writers. He is, indeed, the only writer at this level to bring out a new book every year. Each one still better than the last.

This book is outstanding. It is deeply affecting – disturbing and shocking – and does what a truly good book should do… It stays in your head for days, if not weeks, after its read. As a master class in gathering tension it is sublime, as it is with the building blocks of storyline and the creation of character. Seymour is able to look into the grey areas of compromised ideals and political expediency with subtlety, and his perennial interest in the way that some people will fold under pressure and some (not always the expected ones) will find reserves of courage, makes him a terrifically powerful novelist.
 

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