In At The Kill (Jonas Merrick series)

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Character driven clever descriptive imaginative and intelligent, and totally engaging from first to last page, with the tension building with every turn of the page. My favourite character was the "hero" Jonas Merrick, a beautifully understated "conductor", masterminding events from his nondescript backroom lair. The pace is perfectly measured - rather than the somewhat frenetic "throwaway" action of some espionage novels I've read.

He previously featured in The Crocodile Hunter (in which he dodged imminent retirement by singlehandedly apprehended a would be suicide bomber) and The Foot Soldiers (in which he was loaned to sister service MI6 to help investigate an apparent leak). Contrary to what we might infer from watching Line of Duty, this area of work is considered a bit oif a backwater by everyone in the intelligence community. In this novel, however, he has found himself moved from handling potential security threats to dealing with organised crime groups and one Liverpool-based one in particular. The amazingly boring gray civil servant Jonas Merrick turns out in an unbelievable fashion to be the real James Bond.Other similar authors include: John le Carre, Len Deighton, Graham Greene, Alan Furst, Mick Herron, Ted Allbeury, Robert Ludlum, Dan Fesperman, Simon Conway, Henry Porter and Adam Brookes. The players were well written and interesting, the plot intrigued and I should have loved it but I didn't.

In the 3rd book in the series he is tasked in regards to an OCG (organised crime group) a sleepy backwater of SIS, out of sight and out of mind scenario. With his trademark, slow-burn story - ultimately slight in nature - and a largish cast of well-drawn characters, expertly executed. I have followed Seymour, and read all his books, since Harry's Game in the 1970's and like a fine wine he seems to get better and better as the years pass. Having been assigned, he works as assiduously as ever, and the fact that he has a wholly new sphere of external contacts to deal with, does not make him try to be any more gracious or amenable than he has been in the past.

Jonas Merrick in his Smiley-esque role is a slow moving puller of strings but the book travels at a fast pace, not least because of the episodic structure of the writing, which means keeping the reader's wits alert as each scene changes. Every Seymour novel is like a runaway train heading down a sloping track, steadily gathering pace until eventually it crashes, with inevitable consequences for the characters, good and bad, that he has introduced us to.

This is the first book I've read by Gerald Seymour, but I intend to remedy that as I enjoyed it so much. Weather intervenes and the semi-submersible is forced to push on towards a landing on the Spanish Costa del Morte, the coast of death around Cape Finisterre.This is the third book in this excellent series featuring the totally believable and ever so endearing Jonas Merrick. As usual in my reviews, I will not rehash the plot or the publisher's blurb - instead I highly recommend that you read this for yourself.

My thanks to the Author publisher's and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review. I felt that the author was attempting to go down the Frederick Forsyth/John le Carre route re espionage, but it didn't really come off. It starts as a slow burner but the pace accelerates gradually into a shatteringly tense, exciting climax.But while Jonas’s colleagues regard him as scratchy, fastidious, old, he is also ruthless, cunning and brutally pragmatic.