Book Review

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The Crocodile Hunter, by Gerald Seymour

I have capitalised the title, to give it a conventional appearance, contrary to how it is shown on the cover of the book; I know I can sometimes shun convention, but showing the title of a book in all lower case [but not the author’s name] just looks affected to me: sorry. If the author’s name looks familiar, to those of my readers ‘of a certain age’, that is because he was a reporter for the ITN [International Television News] company in Britain for fifteen years, covering America’s war in Viet Nam, and the Middle East; he has been a full-time writer since 1978, and is probably best known for Harry’s Game, which was successfully dramatised for television, based on his experience in Northern Ireland, including witnessing Bloody Sunday. This is his thirty-seventh novel. I have read the aforementioned Harry’s Game, a few years ago now, so I can’t remember if the writing style of the illustrious precursor was the same as that utilised in this narrative, where the mostly third-person description of the action is somewhat clipped, by the intermittent omission of articles, definite & indefinite [the, a, an], and personal pronouns, to indicate a thought process, often rushed: this can be effective, but I have to confess that it felt slightly overused in this narrative, which does become tiresome after a while.

This concern aside, the story and its dénouement are well played out. This book is evidently one of a series; a new story, The Foot Soldiers [again correctively capitalised]  is due out next month, March 2022; but it is impossible to discern, from the publications list at the front of the book, how many previous Jonas Merrick novels there have been. That notwithstanding, the character is sightly unusual in being initially at the end of his security service career; he is a ‘Fiver’, but he does bear some characteristic similarities with an illustrious fictional colleague, albeit across the river from Thames House, George Smiley: the reasons for this similarity are impossible to know, but it is a useful similarity, and far be it from me to speculate that it is any sort of ‘crib’. Merrick’s nickname among his colleagues is The Eternal Flame, because he never goes out [i.e.: leave his office]: he revels in slow, deliberate, painstaking research, seeking out potential threats to the security of Britain and, although in the early stages of his career, field work would have been barred to him, latterly it has been a matter of choice, preferring to confer the privilege of the more prestigious, albeit secret, and for internal acknowledgment only, surveillance & capture of targets on younger & fitter operatives.

However, on the evening of his leaving party, his 60th birthday, which signifies his retirement, he does something uncharacteristic: he has no positive expectations of the event, so he exits the building to give him a breathing space, and after a short walk along the river, completely by chance [and fortuitously for the story] he encounters a potential suicide bomber, whom he recognises from his research; but a very nervous, young, white radicalised British lad by the name of Winston Gunn, the product of a Caucasian, lorry-driver father and a Quetta, Pakistan-born mother. Exercising icy calm, he talks to the lad and, when he has gained Gunn’s trust, he defuses the explosive device. This act of conspicuous bravery, for which he is subsequently [but discreetly] awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, which his wife Vera keeps at the bottom of her knicker drawer, earns him a reprieve from retirement, towards which he seemed to have no strong feelings either way: he & Vera enjoy their touring caravan holidays [and Jonas is blithely unconcerned about the traffic tailbacks this activity inevitably generates], but he also enjoys his work, which he considers to be ever more necessary, regrettably. His continuation of employment brings with it a new respect & concomitant status: the AssDepDG [Assistant Deputy Director General of the Service] now reads every memo from Jonas, instead of routinely giving them barely more than a cursory glance; and he has acquired a new sobriquet, ‘Wobby’, meaning the AssDepDG’s ‘Wise Old Bird’.

The eponymous crocodile is a new target: a potentially very dangerous individual; a returning jihadi, but a white British one, who could very easily go to ground on his return, and metaphorically lurk below the surface while preparing to strike at a significant target. Jonas reduces the candidate list of known possibilities to the one who seems most likely, in very short order, and begins his methodical research, whilst at the same time being painfully aware that rumours of a lethally destructive weapon being brought over land to Britain could signify an imminent & devastating revenge attack by this individual. Unfortunately, resources are stretched, because of a multiplicity of domestic operations, so Jonas is assigned two new and rather raw recruits for his field work. Jonas realises that his dispassionate expertise is needed out in the field, so he travels to Canterbury, just outside which the target originates from, and meets the two local tactical weapons officers who have been somewhat grudgingly told to assist him on the ground, but who initially regard him from appearances & personality as ineffectual. Interspersed within this narrative is an exposition of the back story of the target; his family background, his disenchantment with conventional British society, and his enjoyment of military action with trusted ‘brothers’ in Syria, fighting under the black flag.

The dénouement is satisfying, which is a great relief to Jonas, because his reputation, and that of ‘Five’, are very much on the line here; as the IRA famously said: “We only need to be lucky once.” Given the protagonist’s age, his future career must be somewhat limited, but nevertheless, it should be possible to conceive of a few new stories on this canon, so I will keep my eyes open for them; or any previous ones, come to that. The paperback I read was published in 2021 by Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1-529-38604-2.

Book Review

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Double Agent, by Tom Bradby

This author’s name might already be familiar to some of my British readers, given that he has worked extensively as a journalist & correspondent for the Independent Television Network, and that work has encompassed political affairs, so at the very least, it can be said that he knows of what he writes: much more than your present humble blogger, anyway. In addition to the Kate Henderson series, of which this is the second member, he has also written six other novels which, notwithstanding that he had, to 2020, been with ITN for thirty years [which is slightly belied by his annoyingly youthful-looking photograph accompanying the bio on the inside back cover], does beg the question of how demanding his ‘day job’ must be, but to be fair, and with no disrespect intended, authors who churn out piles of books, seemingly on a conveyor belt, tend to be part of a committee, rather than independent scribblers, slaving away in a garret, so it’s probably not too difficult to find a spare hour or so to commit some thoughts to an electronic record, which can then be scrutinised & knocked into shape by editors & proofreaders.

As stated, this book is the sequel to the story which introduced the character, Secret Service [possibly rather too generic a title, but no matter], but that is no impediment to an enjoyment of this story because the backstory is either detailed right at the beginning, or nuggets are drip-fed into the narrative as it progresses; this is a very common device, and perfectly acceptable, and has been adopted by television drama for story arcs [although the somewhat irritating practice of previewing the next episode at the end of the current one, “Next time!”, is now very common, and it is even more irritating in ‘real-life’ documentaries & travelogues, where it is used at the end of each segment, “Coming up!”, before the commercial break!]. That said, I would be happy to read the previous story, even though I now know the ending: there is a school of thought that we enjoy a story more when we already know the ending, so perhaps this proves it.

Kate Henderson is a senior Secret Intelligence Service, aka MI6, officer; head of the Russia Desk; and, although it is presumably more common now for women to hold senior positions in the security services, she is perhaps unusual in that her husband was also an MI6 operative, but defected to Russia because he was unmasked as a mole, codenamed Viper. This was understandably traumatic for her, so at the beginning of this story, she is still suffering the effects of the fallout from this bombshell, and only just managing to hold her work together. She is, however, lucky [possibly implausibly so?] that her aunt is the head of the Personnel Department, and spends a lot of time at her home, to help look after Kate’s two children; also an old and close friend works with her in the same department. One major fly in the ointment is that Kate has been assigned a deputy, Suzy Spencer; “slim, pretty, northern, state-educated and half Vietnamese”, who has been seconded from 5 to replace her former deputy & friend, Rav, who was killed at the unsuccessful end of the previous mission, “Operation Sigma”. This is quite clearly the result of her husband’s treachery, so it is just one more thing for Kate to be concerned about.

The ‘meat’ of the story concerns the potential defection of a senior Russian Intelligence officer, Mikhail Borodin, as well as his father, Igor, the former head of the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, and his wife. This has come about by having fallen out of favour somewhat, as a result of tensions between the SVR [the successor to the KGB] & the GRU, Russia’s military espionage agency: apparently, Igor has been ousted in a coup, orchestrated by the GRU, and his colleague, Vasily Durov, is already under arrest. What would sweeten the deal is that they would supply allegedly categorical evidence that the current British Prime Minister is an agent for Russia, and has been for many years; this evidence would include financial payments, and video footage showing the man engaging in sex with underage girls, when he was a soldier in Kosovo. Naturally, there is always the chance that this evidence could be faked, so Kate knows she has to proceed very carefully, but this awareness is complicated by her suspicion that at least one of her current colleagues could also be a mole. During the action, Kate meets up with an erstwhile colleague [and old flame, natch] from her time at University in Russia, and even endures a somewhat awkward overnight stay with her estranged husband in Moscow. It’s not a bad yarn, as spy stories go, so I will keep my eyes open for other publications by Bradby. The Penguin paperback I read was published in 2020 by Bantam Press, ISBN 978-0-5521-7553-1.