In At The Kill (Jonas Merrick series)

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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.

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. MI5 (via Merrick) has a deeply implanted agent in that area, one with an almost 3 year undercover engagement there, someone who has managed to become well infiltrated into the ruling drug running family of the region.Still as querulous and obdurate as ever, he has been assigned to help the fight against OCG (organised crime groups). Also, if the characters were suppose to be bad, then where was the terrible violence that crime families would inflict.

This is the third book in this excellent series featuring the totally believable and ever so endearing Jonas Merrick. 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. The third in the Jonas Merrick series, and with Merck there now seems insufficient character left to be developed.The plotline of this latest novel from Gerald Seymour is excellent, multi-national criminals involved in drugs smuggling become the focus of multi-agency efforts to prevent them from succeeding under the direction of Jonas Merrick from his desk in Whitehall.

I think I've read all of Gerald Seymour's books but find this and the other Jonas Merrick books tough going. It is never an easy read, as Seymour builds the fear and worry you feel for the characters as the climax approaches, but once you are a single chapter into a Seymour novel I would defy anyone to put it down and leave the rest unread. 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. I found the first 100 pp fairly slow going but the pace picked up very quickly after that and the last quarter or so of this novel is as tense and exciting as any of Seymour’s previous works.I loved the fact that he seemed so ordinary but was so instrumental to national and international security.

I think that he could have trimmed a little from it as it seemed to take an eternity to get to the end point and by that time I was not invested enough in any of the characters to really care very much.This is as always a superbly crafted thriller, yet so real, you can envisage getting stuck behind Merrick's caravan!