In At The Kill (Jonas Merrick series)

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As usual our hero to the possible detriment to his own health gets a little too close to the action. 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.

London: Jonas Merrick, grey and quiet, alone in a small office, seems an unlikely character to be tasked with bringing down an international drug network. 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. 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.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. 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.

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.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. This is as always a superbly crafted thriller, yet so real, you can envisage getting stuck behind Merrick's caravan! With his trademark, slow-burn story - ultimately slight in nature - and a largish cast of well-drawn characters, expertly executed. My thanks to the Author publisher's and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review. I found this initially offered an interesting perspective on the developing plot, although it gradually became rather irritating.