The Foot Soldiers
On sale
31st March 2022
Price: £20
‘[A] masterly novel’ – The Sunday Times
‘Strong echoes of George Smiley’ – Financial Times
‘A novel of real quality. Top brass’ – The Times Thriller of the Month
*****
Beware of Russians bearing gifts.
Defectors are not always welcome.
Is the information they bring worth the cost of protecting them for the rest of their lives? Is it even genuine? Might they be double agents?
These are some of the questions facing MI6 when a Russian agent hands himself in to them in Denmark.
As a team begins to assess his value, his former employers in the Kremlin develop a brutal plan to show that no defector will ever be safe.
And they know where to find him. Which means there must be a mole in MI6.
So it is that the cavaliers of Six find themselves being interrogated by nondescript Jonas Merrick of Five – the man called back from retirement and his beloved caravan, the man the young guns call the Eternal Flame because ‘he never goes out.’
But while he may be grey, Jonas is also ruthless. As he quietly works through the suspects in London, and violent mayhem breaks out in Denmark, Jonas plans not just to unmask a traitor, but to hit back at the Russians with deadly force.
First encountered in The Crocodile Hunter, Jonas Merrick is set to become one of the great figures of modern spy fiction.
*****
Readers love THE FOOT SOLDIERS:
‘I was completely gripped by the plot and interdepartmental jealousies and rivalries. I couldn’t put it down!’
*****
‘A book that fans of the George Smiley series will love’
*****
‘A brilliant, suspenseful and contemporary thriller . . . A wonderfully complex and unputdownable tale of defectors, traitors, internal politics . . . and assassination’
*****
‘Seymour continues to carry the flame for the espionage genre, and his sublime creation, Jonas Merrick, a 21st-century George Smiley . . . is slowly but surely becoming a classic literary creation’
****
‘Strong echoes of George Smiley’ – Financial Times
‘A novel of real quality. Top brass’ – The Times Thriller of the Month
*****
Beware of Russians bearing gifts.
Defectors are not always welcome.
Is the information they bring worth the cost of protecting them for the rest of their lives? Is it even genuine? Might they be double agents?
These are some of the questions facing MI6 when a Russian agent hands himself in to them in Denmark.
As a team begins to assess his value, his former employers in the Kremlin develop a brutal plan to show that no defector will ever be safe.
And they know where to find him. Which means there must be a mole in MI6.
So it is that the cavaliers of Six find themselves being interrogated by nondescript Jonas Merrick of Five – the man called back from retirement and his beloved caravan, the man the young guns call the Eternal Flame because ‘he never goes out.’
But while he may be grey, Jonas is also ruthless. As he quietly works through the suspects in London, and violent mayhem breaks out in Denmark, Jonas plans not just to unmask a traitor, but to hit back at the Russians with deadly force.
First encountered in The Crocodile Hunter, Jonas Merrick is set to become one of the great figures of modern spy fiction.
*****
Readers love THE FOOT SOLDIERS:
‘I was completely gripped by the plot and interdepartmental jealousies and rivalries. I couldn’t put it down!’
*****
‘A book that fans of the George Smiley series will love’
*****
‘A brilliant, suspenseful and contemporary thriller . . . A wonderfully complex and unputdownable tale of defectors, traitors, internal politics . . . and assassination’
*****
‘Seymour continues to carry the flame for the espionage genre, and his sublime creation, Jonas Merrick, a 21st-century George Smiley . . . is slowly but surely becoming a classic literary creation’
****
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Reviews
Praise for Gerald Seymour:-
He has never lost his journalist's eye for the stories behind the news
Compelling novel . . . Seymour's feel for the Kent landscape and his realisation of minor characters, such as Cameron's heart-hardened mother, are almost Dickensian
Ask aficionados who is Britain's finest thriller writer, and many would answer the veteran Gerald Seymour
The three British masters of suspense, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and John le Carre, have been joined by a fourth - Gerald Seymour
Seymour produces the most intelligent writing in the thriller genre
Britain's finest thriller novelist is still the veteran Gerald Seymour, whose touch remains sure
A cleverly nuanced climax in which tables are unexpectedly turned more than once . . . marks this as a novel of real quality. Top brass
This is multi-layered spy-fi at its best, with Seymour showing that even after thirty-seven novels he has lost none of his talent for thrilling plots and creating credible and sympathetic characters, nor his journalist's eye for modern espionage tradecraft and techniques
Seymour's finger is always on the current socio-political pulse, and the new book is a welcome return for his curmudgeonly MI5 man Jonas Merrick
Supreme spy writer
If le Carré had written about spies on the front line . . . Seymour makes more than le Carré of treachery's potential impact on frontline personnel. [A] masterly novel
There are strong echoes of George Smiley in Merrick's mild and unprepossessing manner, which disguises a razor-sharp brain and considerable courage when necessary
