Gerald Seymour - Jericho's War

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Not a Seymour classic

Gerald Seymour is a genuinely great thriller writer with a body of excellent books behind him.  Jericho's War, but it isn't one of his best.

This is classic Seymour territory – a whisper of two High Value Targets in villages in Yemen and a small team assembled slightly on the hop to go in and assassinate them.  We get the histories of the three-man team, the tensions between them and the slow, meticulous details and playing out of the operation.  Indeed, it's such classic Seymour territory that if you have read A Deniable Death you may, as I did, find quite a bit of this slightly familiar.  It's well done in many ways and there is genuine tension and interest, but the middle of the book especially dragged considerably for me.

Part of the problem is that we get the personal stories and internal monologues of a very large number of people: each of the three-man team, two "assets" on the ground, the two targets, a three-man team controlling a drone, the agent controlling the operation, three intelligence officers in Yemen, another three in London…and so on and so on.  It's too much, and the story gets very stodgy in places as a result.  We even get the point of view of an uninvolved camel drover miles from any action – whose apparent irrelevance but detailed history acted as a significant spoiler for me.  It felt as though there was a lot of repetition, too, and I wanted to say "OK, OK – I get it!" rather often.

So – long on atmosphere, setting and characters, but at the expense of good storytelling in too many places.  It's still better than a lot of espionage thrillers because of the quality of the writing and meticulous research, but it could have done with a good deal of trimming and tightening up.  I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4, but this comes with a qualified recommendation.