In At The Kill (Jonas Merrick series)

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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. The players were well written and interesting, the plot intrigued and I should have loved it but I didn't. My favourite character was the "hero" Jonas Merrick, a beautifully understated "conductor", masterminding events from his nondescript backroom lair. I did wonder that if this manuscript had come from someone without this reputation, would Hodder and Stoughton have been so keen to publish?

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. The pace is perfectly measured - rather than the somewhat frenetic "throwaway" action of some espionage novels I've read. Sidelined by his security service bosses to work on organised crime, he tracks a cocaine-packed submersible and the crime families betting their empires and vanity on its cargo.At times I felt a great empathy for his position, being almost ostracised from most of his colleagues. I wonder how far Gerald Seymour can extend this series before the personality of Merrick becomes so odious to the reader that they can’t take any more. 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.

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.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 Jonas Merrick, Seymour has created a fascinating, annoying and infuriating character everyone who has ever worked in a large organisation can relate to - the apparently irrelevant jobsworth who quietly and meticulously weaves his web and achieves results that surprise all of those who have dismissed him as a nobody.so we can see Jonas adapting to new - and difficult - circumstances as a widower, whilst continuing his Eternal Flame duties. Out of the Jonas Merrick novels, this person thought that 'The Foot Soldiers' was the best one so far. This is the third book in this excellent series featuring the totally believable and ever so endearing Jonas Merrick. 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. I think I've read all of Gerald Seymour's books but find this and the other Jonas Merrick books tough going.