The Outsiders

December 22, 2014
MI5’s Winnie Monks, the protagonist of this joyless, repetitive thriller from Seymour (The Dealer and the Dead), reassembles her scattered Graveyard Team of organized crime investigators to avenge the murder of young agent Damian Fenby five years earlier in Budapest. An unexpected break finally identifies the killer as veteran Russian crime boss Petar Alexander Borsonov, and when Monks learns he is going to visit the home of fellow Russian Pavel Ivanov on Spain’s Costa del Sol, she sets in motion a plan to take Borsonov down. Complications abound: Monk’s advance team finds house-sitting young Brits in the supposedly empty house next door that other team members intended to use, an aging British con man gets involved with Ivanov, and Monk’s chosen sniper suffers from debilitating PTSD. Seymour takes his time developing the major players with small, seemingly inconsequential incidents morphing into major developments. In the end, fickle fate holds the winning cards. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

January 1, 2015
Overrun with spies, cops and Euro mobsters, Seymour's 29th novel concerns a female MI5 veteran's obsessive need to avenge the death of a young colleague who was kicked to death by a Russian crime lord.Years after the brutal killing, word reaches Winnie Monks, former head of a since-dissolved organized crime group within MI5, that the mobster, known as the Major, is heading to Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol. That intel is provided by "the Gecko," a young computer whiz working for the Major, in retaliation for getting beat up for a minor theft he didn't commit. Plans are made to set up surveillance in the vacant house next to the one in which the Major, a former KGB man, will be staying with a drug-smuggling associate. But when Monks and her team arrive at their appointed spot, they encounter housesitters: a moody and not easily handled young British couple, Jonno and Posie. This will prove to be more than a complication; it will alter the course of events. Working on a larger canvas than usual in terms of the sheer number of characters, Seymour keeps the book's motor humming, changing scenes and points of view with expert timing. The overall tone is lighter than in his pulse-pounders; some of the scenes could even pass for satire. And various elements here will recall bits and pieces from some of Seymour's better-known novels. But none of that diminishes his hold over the reader. A fresh Spanish setting, a stream of characters with great nicknames like "the Tractor," and a mix of British, Eastern European and American crime fighters make Seymour's 29th novel one of his most entertaining.

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Starred review from February 1, 2015
A young agent from MI5's Organized Crime Group investigating arms trafficking is found kicked to death outside Budapest. Winnie Monks, the head of OCG, burns with the desire to identify his killers and deal with them. But five years pass and her group is reassigned as counterterrorism becomes Five's preoccupation. Then a clue surfaces, and Winnie reassembles OCG to surveil a Russian known as the Major. He is headed for Marbella, on Spain's Costa del Sol. But a feckless young Brit and his girlfriend, house sitting in Marbella, put a kink in Winnie's plans. Seymour again deploys a sizable cast of very well developed characters and a complex but utterly believable plot to produce another terrific read. Winnie is luminous, a force of nature. The Major is as cold an evildoer as fiction will see this year. Another 10 characters are similarly compelling, even the nameless Latvian policeman working in The Hague who serves as Seymour's Greek chorus, explaining the architecture of contemporary Euro crime to EU politicians. Already classed with Eric Ambler and John le Carr' as an espionage master, Seymour burnishes his reputation with each new book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)