The Foot Soldiers: A Sunday Times Thriller of the Month (Jonas Merrick series)

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Also, it was one of the rare times this reader has read a novel and finished it without really liking any of the characters in the story! Yet, even though it was a character driven story, this person still enjoyed the novel immensely. The author , this person thought, was trying to show the grim side of counter-intelligence work (MI5) and the cost it has on their lives. It was through Seymour's powerful writing that he could take a simple storyline and, even with a predictable conclusion, still give the reader a spellbinding story. 4 STARS. The story is about counter-intelligence and MI5, which is inherently duller than espionage and MI6 (catching spies is mmore boring than spying), but that was not the problem - the plot was good enough. What I had a hard time to bear with was the protagonist’s characterisation; with the aim of making him look smart and unconventional, the author stretches the protagonist’s habits, customs and idiosyncrasies to such an extreme that he becomes a caricature (almost an OCD type); except that making your dude look like a weirdo does not make him more interesting - to me, at least. By continuing to disguise himself as an idiot, he ends up looking like one.

Gerald Seymour has found a good formula for churning out novels almost, it seems, at will. This reader has read many of them over the years and has usually found them current, realistic and well researched. Each are different from one another and on this occasion, this reader thought that even though it was a bit slow in places, the novel itself felt authentic, quite believable with realistic characters and situations. This person thought that he was actually on the bus (in chapter 16) looking over at the park where Jonas and the surveillance team were stationed with Sadie Jilkes badgering the bus driver to stop. Quite an accomplishment by the author. But then again, all the characters of the book are mediocre people, bored, tired people just wanting out of whatever they are in; maybe that's the world the author wanted to paint. If so, so be it, but the effect for the reader is certainly not uplifting. JM is a cantankerous and sometimes banal old bug.ger. However, he’s crafted in such a way as to make the story brilliant. His genius is most pleasing, and the tom-foolery with making others believe him dumb, ha!This is multi-layered spy-fi at its best, with Seymour showing that even after thirty-seven novels he has lost none of his talent for thrilling plots and creating credible and sympathetic characters, nor his journalist's eye for modern espionage tradecraft and techniques * Shots Magazine * Maybe I'm just burned out on counter terrorism themed thrillers but the Crocodile Hunter is my least favorite Seymour novel that I've read. Not to say it's bad or anything. The novel is certainly above average for the genre but I didn't enjoy it as much as some of his other work. It happens to every reader that now and then one comes across a book best described as “un-put-down-able”. You’ve been there, I’m sure. My average for devouring one of those books is two days at most; “The Crocodile Hunter” took me two weeks. Most “Must-put-down-able”. Just like the crocodile I had to come up for air now and then.

The main storyline in this novel revolves around a Russian defector in the hands of MI6. They are trying to keep him safe and assess his worth but attempts are made on his life and it becomes clear that there is a leak within Mi6. Jonas is sent across the bridge to investigate and determine the source of the leak. I thoroughly enjoyed The Foot Soldiers. It’s probably my favourite since A Deniable Death. It is especially good on the rivalry between MI5 and MI6 employees.

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Defectors are not always welcome. Is the information they bring worth the cost of protecting them for the rest of their lives? Is it even genuine? Might they be double agents? Television adaptations have been made Gerald Seymour (born 25 November 1941 in Guildford, Surrey) is a British writer. Brown’s task is to arrest the assassin, Billy Downes, who is an IRA gunman. By the time Brown arrives in Northern Ireland, Downes has escaped to Belfast. When he is not writing, Gerald fishes, watches sports on TV and walks his dogs. He often grumbles, in jest, that he has little time for these hobbies. Gerald Seymour’s books Harry’s Game