Book Summary and Reviews of A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour

A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour

A Deniable Death

by Gerald Seymour

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Feb 2013, 448 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

The rules are simple.  Break up your shape.  Hide your smell.  Never show your silhouette.  Check the surfaces of your kit.  Space the movements of your team.  Use the shadows.  Danny "Badger" Baxter has a talent for surveillance.  He's always followed the rules.  Until now, they've kept him alive.

But now Badger has a bigger job than photographing dissident Northern Irish Republicans in muddy Ulster fields, or Islamic extremists on rainswept Yorkshire moors. MI6 have a plan to assassinate the Engineer - a brilliant maker of Improvised Explosive Devices, the roadside bombs which account for 80% of Allied casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The spooks know he's planning to leave his home in Iran.  They just need to find out when and where he's traveling.

So Badger finds himself on the wrong side of the Iranian border, burdened with a partner he loathes, lying under a merciless sun in a mosquito-infested marsh, observing the house. If things go wrong, as far as Her Majesty's Government is concerned, his part in the plot is completely deniable.  Gerald Seymour expertly explores the moral compromises of the secret world upon which we rely for our everyday security - and the amazing reserves of courage which ordinary people can find in extraordinary circumstances.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Once the narrative gains momentum, it's hard to put this one down." - Publishers Weekly

"Seymour's painstaking attention to detail is a plus, as it gives the story an authentic ring and lets the reader experience the mission in real time." - Kirkus

"The three British masters of suspense, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and John le Carre, have been joined by a fourth - Gerald Seymour." –New York Times

"Not since the arrival of John le Carre has the emergence of an international suspense novelist been as stunning as that of Gerald Seymour." –Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Seymour] isn't just abreast of the headlines, [but] ahead of them." - The Washington Post

"Seymour may be the best spy novelist ever." –Philadelphia Inquirer

This information about A Deniable Death was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Gerald Seymour Author Biography

Gerald Seymour was one of the UK's premier television news reporters. He was an eyewitness, up close and on the ground, to some of the epoch changing events of the last decades. Among them, he was on the streets of Londonderry on Bloody Sunday when paratroops clashed with Irish demonstrators. He was at the Munich Olympics and saw the agony of Israeli athletes held hostage by Palestinian gunmen and then the catastrophic failure of the German police to save them. He was in Rome in the cruel days when the Red Brigade captured Aldo Moro, a veteran politician, then savagely murdered him. His first novel, Harry's Game, was an instant bestseller and immediately established Seymour as one of the most cutting-edge and incisive thriller writers in the UK and around the world. Since then, his ...

... Full Biography

Other books by Gerald Seymour at BookBrowse
  • The Walking Dead jacket

6 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked A Deniable Death, try these:

  • A Colder War jacket

    A Colder War

    by Charles Cumming

    Published 2015

    About this book

    Cumming returns with MI6 agent Tom Kell (A Foreign Country), in a tour de force that will dazzle readers and critics alike.

  • The Long Walk jacket

    The Long Walk

    by Brian Castner

    Published 2013

    About this book

    In the tradition of Michael Herr's Dispatches and works by such masters of the memoir as Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff, a powerful account of war and homecoming that grabs readers by the throat even as it touches their hearts.

  • The Taliban Shuffle jacket

    The Taliban Shuffle

    by Kim Barker

    Published 2012

    About this book

    A true-life Catch-22 set in the deeply dysfunctional countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, by one of the region's longest-serving correspondents.

We have 11 read-alikes for A Deniable Death, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
When No One Else Will
by Amanda Skenandore
1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young
    by Zayd Ayers Dohrn
    Son of Weather Underground radicals recounts life on the run and decades of revolutionary struggle.
  • Book Jacket
    Look What You Made Me Do
    by John Lanchester
    A propulsive tale of intergenerational tension and revenge from the Booker Prize nominee.
Who Said...

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.