In At The Kill (Jonas Merrick series)

Product Information

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.

I understand that this is the third book in a series - although I haven't read the earlier novels, I felt that this book worked just fine as a standalone.I appreciate that Gerald Seymour books are all about the gradual build up of tension but this was pedestrian and the pay-off not worth the wait. 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). This is the third book in this excellent series featuring the totally believable and ever so endearing Jonas Merrick. 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.

It starts as a slow burner but the pace accelerates gradually into a shatteringly tense, exciting climax. He always sets out good plots but his writing style is starting to irritate with his insistence on using three or four similes when one will do and how he painfully tries to avoid clichés. As in earlier novels, Merrick acts as a lone wolf and manages to antagonise senior officers in parts of the UK’s law enforcement agencies outside MI5. so we can see Jonas adapting to new - and difficult - circumstances as a widower, whilst continuing his Eternal Flame duties. Television adaptations have been made of his books Harry's Game, The Glory Boys, The Contract, Red Fox, Field Of Blood, A Line In The Sand and The Waiting Time.

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.

He soon finds himself at the centre of a network of informants, undercover operatives and contacts from a collection of police and intelligence services around the globe. 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. 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. But, in this installment, things take a time to get going and then after you, the reader, have all the players understood, it takes a bit more time to get going and then, finally you get to the climax of the story.He is something of an anti-hero, who cares little for his perceived persona but a great deal for the team he directs into danger.