Vagabond
-
-
3.5 • 6 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
It was a dirty job in a dirty war.
Danny Curnow, known in the army family by his call sign, Vagabond, ran agents, informers. Played God with their lives and their deaths, and was the best at his job - and he quit when the stress overwhelmed him.
Now he lives in quiet isolation and works as a guide to tourists visiting the monuments and cemeteries of an earlier, simpler, conflict on Normandy's D-Day beaches.
Until the call comes from an old boss, Bentinick.
Violence in Northern Ireland is on the rise again. Weapons are needed for a new campaign. Gaby Davies of MI5, sparky and ambitious, runs the double agent Ralph Exton, who will be the supposed middle man in brokering an arms deal with a Russian contact, Timofey.
The covert world of deception and betrayal was close to destroying Danny across the Irish Sea. Fifteen years later the stakes are higher, the risks greater, and there is an added agenda on the table. If he wants to survive, Danny will have to prove, to himself, that he has not softened, that he is as hard and ruthless as before.
VAGABOND shows Gerald Seymour writing at the top of his powers and returning to the territory of some of his greatest bestsellers, Harry's Game, Field of Blood and The Journeyman Tailor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Seymour returns, with mixed results, to the conflict between the Irish Republican Army and Great Britain that catalyzed his first novel, Harry's Game (1975). In the present day, tensions in Northern Ireland are on the rise. Two Russian agents, who are working from the Czech Republic, are happy to sell weapons to patient, simmering IRA terrorist Malachy Riordan through middleman Ralph Exton, a small-time smuggler who desperately needs money. Exton is afraid of his Russian clients and of the MI5 agents who have made him a reluctant double agent. Seymour excels at creating characters with deep backstories: Riordan, the not-posh MI5 agent Gaby Davies, an unusually honest copy in Prague named Karol Pilar, and, best of all, the legendary double agent brought out of retirement to handle Exton, Danny Curnow (code name Vagabond). He also does a fine job of capturing the enduring hostility on both sides, but a slow-moving, hard-to-fathom plot makes this a slog.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
Probably his best work yet.