In At The Kill (Jonas Merrick series)

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Another outstanding and hugely satisfying instalment in the Jonas Merrick series from Gerald Seymour.

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. In this novel, Merrick’s covert agent knows that, if he is successful in his mission, the son of someone he has become very close to will be murdered horribly by Columbian drug lords. All told, I left the book with a feeling of disappointment due to both the warm recommendation and the reputation of the author from his ITN reporting days.At times I felt a great empathy for his position, being almost ostracised from most of his colleagues. With his trademark, slow-burn story - ultimately slight in nature - and a largish cast of well-drawn characters, expertly executed. The character of Jonas Merrick seems to have developed in a rather unpleasant way that I found irritating to such an extent that it distracted from the storyline rather than added to it.

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. As usual our hero to the possible detriment to his own health gets a little too close to the action.This is as always a superbly crafted thriller, yet so real, you can envisage getting stuck behind Merrick's caravan! 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. Initially a journalist, he joined ITN in 1963, covering such topics as the Great Train Robbery, Vietnam, Ireland, the Munich Olympics massacre, Germany's Red Army, Italy's Red Brigades and Palestinian militant groups.

The only drag back for me is despite a great lead character and plausible supporting cast and storylines, the big crescendo that is seemingly built up never arrives. 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. This is the first book I've read by Gerald Seymour, but I intend to remedy that as I enjoyed it so much. I think I've read all of Gerald Seymour's books but find this and the other Jonas Merrick books tough going. I found this initially offered an interesting perspective on the developing plot, although it gradually became rather irritating.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 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. Yet Seymour also endows him with two endearing character traits - his desire to be in on the action at the sharp end, despite his physical limitations that should restrict him to his behind the scenes role, and his angst at the impact his plans will inevitably have on the sometimes entirely innocent people who are caught up in the operations he plans.