Every month we feature a different author, publisher or bookseller who has earned the RLK! seal of approval! We will highlight and review their books/company as well as providing author biographies (where available) and publishing information. We hope you enjoy RLK! Spotlight On....

Author Bio:

Gerald Seymour was born in Guildford in 1941 to a literary family. His father, William Kean Seymour, was a bank manager by profession but also a highly acclaimed poet and essayist. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chairman of the Poetry Society. His mother, Rosalind Wade, was a noveIist and short story writer. Seymour's godparents were the British writers James Hanley and James Hilton.

He was educated at Kelly College at Tavistock in Devon and took a BA Hons degree in Modern History at University College, London.

In 1963 he joined ITN as a graduate trainee and his first assignment was reporting on the aftermath of the Great Train Robbery. Within a year, he had been sent to Cyprus where he covered his first military conflict. For the next fifteen years he reported from areas of conflict around the world, from the frontline in South Vietnam, to Aden to Pakistan to Northern Ireland. He became a specialist in terrorism, reporting on the Basque campaign in northern Spain, the Red Army faction in West Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Angry Brigade in Britain and the worldwide attacks by Palestinian groups. In 1969 he spent a good deal of time in Northern Ireland and this experience formed the basis of Harry's Game, which was an immediate bestseller and later an acclauned television series.

He stayed with ITN until 1978, spending the last two years running their Rome office. During this time he had written two more novels and decided to write full time. For six years he and his family lived in Ireland, returning to settle in the West Country in 1984.

With his fiction, Seymour draws upon his journalistic background and methods and this is what gives his books the intense feeling of authenticity that so many critics have remarked upon. He researches assiduously and always 'goes to ground' in the place in question to get the feel of it and to meet the ordinary people whose lives are caught up in extraordinary events outside their control.

Gerald Seymour lives near Bath.


Books Published:

RATING:

Date of Release: Apr '99

Publisher: Random House

Review Source:

KILLING GROUND

Charlotte Parsons is very happy with her life as an a teacher in a small English community. However, her life is suddenly disrupted when American DEA agent Axel Moen enters the picture. In the summer of 1992, Charlotte worked in the home of Giuseppe Ruggerio, the brother of noted Mafioso drug lord Mario Ruggerio. The Ruggerio family wants her to come back for a few weeks to watch over their children. Charlotte no longer needs that job so she plans to decline the offer. However, Axel convinces her to help stop one of the drug kingpins.

Axel promises to protect his amateur mole, but he knows that is a lie. He does not care what happens to his volunteer as long as Mario goes down. In Italy, Charlotte soon finds herself alone as the pawn in a war between various mobs and several international law enforcement entities. Everyone of the players in this deadly game have one thing in common, they do not care what happens to a twenty-three year old female teacher.

Killing Ground is a very good international police procedural that will thrill fans of the sub-genre. Charlotte is a fantastic character, and the mob and law enforcement officials are sloppy and too self-confident - a real-life character-flaw, I'm sure. An arresting saga of the world that turns on menace, mistrust, moral ambiguity, and vaulting ambition.



RATING:

Date of Release: Apr '99

Publisher: Random House

Review Source:

A LINE IN THE SAND

On one side is a man known as Perry. A salesman who served his country once, by fingering an Iranian biochemical warfare plant.

On the other side is Vahid Hossein, a.k.a "The Anvil", who still serves his country as assassin and executioner.

This is a better-than-average "us versus them" novel of international politics and intrigue. There is surprisingly little "America is right" chest-beating in the story, with *both* sides given equal space and time. In fact, it's easy to see how each side things they are right when frequently they are both in the wrong.

Perry and Hossein are well developed, real characters as are the hardbitten professionals who are given the job of protecting Perry who have to come to terms with the fact that this amateur and crook has displayed more courage than most of them have ever had to. Hossein has an ecstatic love of nature which, whilst is indearing, is also central to the finale!

Another top rate Seymour thriller - where Seymour's personal interactions of suburbia come through with stunning effect. The fact that Perry is simply unprepared to run away from everything he knows, and then becomes a scapegoat for a community that feels he has put it at risk by being there, is a damning indictment of society today and really gets you thinking.



RATING:

Date of Release: Feb '99

Publisher: Random House

Review Source:

THE WAITING TIME

All good things to those who wait, so they say.

And some wait longer than others.

They plan their revenge to the finest detail and strike when you least expect it.

For them, the Waiting Time is over...

Gerald Seymour is famous for his fast-paced, action filled, edge of your seat novels and there's no doubt that the more people who read him, the more he will become a world-wide best-selling force to be reckoned with.

It's a cold winter's night at the height of the Cold War, and in a small town on the Baltic coast of East Germany, a young man is dragged from the sea and killed by the regime's secret police. Those present who witness the horror are terrorized into silence. But a British woman is also there and hears the shot which ends her lover's life.

Fast forward ten years...

Dieter Krause is an ex-captain in the Stasi's counter-espionage section, a feted guest at the headquarters of British military intelligence. He is a prized asset, able to give a detailed profile of a rising star in the Russian Ministry of Defence. He is confident that the skeletons in his past are hidden.

Then one day, Corporal Tracy Barnes, a clerk, attacks Krause in the officers' mess. For her, the waiting time is over. She was there at the scene of the young man's murder ten years before. She knows Krause is responsible. It's time for him to pay.

White-knuckle stuff here!!! An exceptional thriller in the Cold War genre and well worth the read for those hard-boiled Cold War fans but also a terrific read for any thriller reader!



RATING:

Date of Release: Aug 99

Publisher: Random House (Corgi)

Review Source:

FIELD OF BLOOD

Sean McNally is IRA through and through. He's sworn his oath and done jobs for the Army. They can count on him.

But then he turns his back on all the violence and all the hatred, all the killing and the maiming, and heads south to the Republic.

He's one of the lucky ones. Life is good, his past is buried.

And then they come looking for him.

Looking for him to do just one more job.

Sean makes one mistake - he says yes.

Now, in the job's aftermath, Sean is captured and is facing a lifetime behind bars. Unless he does the unthinkable.

Unless he becomes a tout.

Meanwhile, David Ferris didn't want to join the army, but found himself right in the middle of it anyway. His path crosses with that of Sean's and he quickly becomes a pawn on the frontline of a war of nerves like no other. As Sean prepares to give evidence against those who trusted him, Ferris must also prepare himself for his own battle. Because, not only is his own life at stake, but also that of the future of the entire command on the IRA.

Political thrillers don't get much more riveting than this one. Right from page one, the reader will find the book to be literally un-put-downable. Seymour's strengths are terrific characterisation and an in-depth knowledge, not only of the IRA, but in the inner-workings of the minds of people who find themselves in these situations. It's realistic, it's bloody and it's terrifying. One of the best thrillers to be written in years and certainly worth the read.




RATING:

Date of Release: Aug 99

Publisher: Random House (Corgi)

Review Source:

HARRY'S GAME

First, a British cabinet minister is gunned down on a suburban London street by an IRA assassin.

Then comes the national outcry. The public want the assassin found - and found now. Someone must pay.

But the trail is cold, too well covered, and the killer has gone to ground somewhere in Belfast. Normal police investigative techniques are not going to help here. They must resort to more unorthodox methods in the hope that they can hunt him down.

And so enters undercover agent, and our hero, Harry Brown. He's ill-prepared and poorly briefed, but he's sent into the heart of the enemy stronghold all the same and he must infiltrate the terrorists and find the killer.

But he's racing against the clock. When the pressure is on mistakes are made and corners are cut and, suddenly, things begin to unravel.

For Harry, alone in a city of strangers, cut off from all help and with no one to turn to, he knows that one false move is enough to leave him dead on the street, just like the cabinet minister whose death he must avenge.

Harry's Game was Seymour's first novel to be published, and this is a great place to start your collection of Seymour books. The plot is tight and the characters are well drawn. There are some slight slips with narrative flow and dialogue, but this was the first Seymour novel to be published, and these slips can be forgiven. Here you will see the great talent of Seymour for writing about what he knows, for immaculate timing and plot flow, and you get a taste for the great novels that are to come.

Highly recommended.




Websites:

Gerald Seymour does not currently have a website.

However, here's the complete list of books by Gerald Seymour. Make sure you add them to your collection today!

Harry's Game
The Glory Boys
Kingfisher
Red Fox
The Contract
Archangel
In Honour Bount
Field of Blood
A Song In The Morning
At Close Quarters
Home Run
Condition Black
The Journeyman Tailor
The Fighting Man
The Heart of Danger
Killing Ground
The Waiting Time
A Line In the Sand

Where to buy:

Availability:     

For those who order online, try:

Amazon UK!   Buy Laymon & Others Here!   



 RLK! Spotlight On...
Past Features

 July: Brian Lumley, Author Click here to view.
 June: Michael Connelly, Author Click here to view.
 May: Stephen Laws, Author Click here to view.
 April: Gemma O'Connor, Author Click here to view.
 March: Simon Clark, Author Click here to view.
 February: Obsidian Books, Publisher Click here to view.
 January: John Case, Author Click here to view.

 A new Feature added monthly so check here often...



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