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The Outsiders [Hardcover]

Gerald Seymour
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
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Book Description

5 July 2012
Winnie Monks has never forgotten - or forgiven - the death of a young agent on her team at the hands of a former Russian Army Major turned gangster. Now, years later, she hears the Major is travelling to a villa on the Costa del Sol and she asks permission to send in a surveillance unit.

They find an empty property near the Major's. The Villa Paraiso. It's perfect to spy from - and as a base for Winnie's darker, less official, plans.

But it turns out that the property isn't deserted. The owners have invited a young British couple to 'house sit' while they are away.

For Jonno and Posie, just embarking on a relationship, this is supposed to be a carefree break in the sun. But when the Secret Service team arrives in paradise, everything changes.

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The Outsiders + A Deniable Death + The Dealer and the Dead
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (5 July 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1444705881
  • ISBN-13: 978-1444705881
  • Product Dimensions: 16.2 x 3.6 x 23.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 32,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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Review

'Those [Seymour] sends off into dangerous territory are, in fact, his readers. With each book, we enter a dangerous universe, and are totally involved with utterly plausible characters, faced with moral choices that are rarely straightforward . . . The single most important element here is the obsessive Winnie, whose pursuit of revenge for her dead agent is the motor for all that happens. Winnie is a forceful creation, with her burning resentment against those who feel contempt for the way the rest of us live.' (Independent)

'Once again demonstrating his ability to probe the moral murkiness of the spy trade and create an absorbingly diverse ensemble, Seymour crafts a sophisticated, reader-teasing tale.' (The Sunday Times)

'[Seymour's] books are rich in the drama of people reacting to events and situations they never could have expected.' (Weekend Press, New Zealand)

'Picking up a novel by Gerald Seymour is like taking a deep breath of fresh air . . . his subject here is the Middle East, presented with a vividness and veracity that makes most of his rivals look footling . . . As always with Seymour, the sense of a minatory foreign landscape is acutely rendered . . . never have the badlands of Iraq been evoked with such oppressive rigour. And how many other writers would have fleshed out the bomb-maker, who would simply represent "evil" in most thrillers? Seymour allows us into the life and consciousness of this man, movingly describing his marriage to a mortally ill woman. When readers get to the nailbiting climax, involving an agonising wait for airborne rescue, they may be wondering why they should bother with any other thriller writer.' (Independent)

'Seymour is a master of the thriller set on the murky edges of modern war . . . As ever he juggles action, context and suspense with a special-forces level of expertise. How long before he turns to Libya?' (i)

'Gerald Seymour is the grand-master of the contemporary thriller and Deniable Death is his greatest work yet. Gripping, revealing and meticulously researched, this is a page-turning masterpiece that will literally leave you breathless.' (Major Chris Hunter, author of Extreme Risk)

'After 28 novels, Seymour's empathy for those he ensnares in his moral minefields remains movingly even-handed.' (Daily Telegraph)

'gripping thriller' (Sun)

'Mr Seymour is . . . on form . . . The tradecraft of silent watching and the discomfort, thirst and increasing claustrophobia of the hideout are brought very much to life . . . the grim landscape of the border region and the harsh lives of its inhabitants are skilfully evoked' (The Economist (Australia))

'Seymour is not one to cut corners. He does his research, thinks hard about his story and gives us richly imagined novels that bristle with authenticity.' (Washington Post on THE COLLABORATOR)

Seymour [is] incapable of creating a two-dimensional character' (The Times 2010-07-18)

'Discerning thriller readers can safely say that the best practitioner currently working in the UK is the veteran Seymour. He is, quite simply, the most intelligent and accomplished in the current field . . . Here, we have a typically compromised Seymour anti-hero, a masterfully organised globe-spanning narrative and a mass of highly persuasive detail. The Dealer and the Dead is Seymour firing on all cylinders, and his rivals need, once again, to look to their laurels. (Barry Forshaw 2010-07-18)

'With Seymour, not only do you get a cracking story deftly told, but you also feel you are learning something.' (Birmingham Press 2010-07-18)

'In a class of his own' (The Times on THE WAITING TIME 2010-07-18)

'one of the modern masters of the craft' (Daily Mail on THE COLLABORATOR 2010-07-18)

About the Author

Gerald Seymour was a reporter at ITN for fifteen years. He covered events in Vietnam, Borneo, Aden, the Munich Olympics, Israel and Northern Ireland. He has been a full-time writer since 1978.

Seymour`s first novel was the acclaimed thriller Harry`s Game, set in Belfast, and since then six of his thrillers have been filmed for television in the UK and US.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Costa Living - and Dying 31 May 2012
By G. M. Sinstadt VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
Anyone who likes a surprise or two might be advised to avoid Michael Watson's review here; not so much an indication of the book's setting and broad general theme, more like a precis of the plot. So I must be careful to restrict myself to saying that the Outsiders are former or current Intelligence personnel who carry out a semi-freelance operation to avenge the murder of a colleague. It is not giving too much away to reveal that there is Russian mafia-style involvement. Previous Seymour readers will expect to find various exotic locations together with presumably authentic acronyms for police and intelligence bodies, and assuredly reliable details of firearms; they will not be disappointed.

The main locale is Malaga. The author's journalistic instincts rarely let him down and here he is bang up to date at the scene of the building scandals that currently threaten the Spanish economy. The ratchetting of tension works, too. Gerald Seymour fans should buy with confidence.

Yet for the uncommitted there have to be caveats. Winnie Monk, a central figure, is not easily credible, not helped by having only two character props - smoking cigarillos and using the f-word - which crop up with almost her every appearance. Stylistically, I am not alone in finding the jumpy chronology at times confusing. The mannerism of beginning a new section with a pronoun that leaves the reader guessing for a paragraph or two is simply irritating. And there is the over-emphasis on Seymour's theme that organised crime is a bigger threat than terrorism: after the second appearance by 'the Latvian policeman' his contributions can be skipped with no effect whatsoever on the narrative.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Vengeance is sweet... 9 Jun 2012
By Big Bertha TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
MI5 agent Winnie Monks is big on loyalty and as leader of 'The Graveyard Team' she vowed to avenge the death of youngest member Damien Fenby, brutally murdered in Budapest. Years later a embittered young Russian walks into the British Embassy in Baku and puts a name to her target. She gathers together the former members of her team and using her contacts heads up an operation to make that goal a reality.

Jonno and girlfriend Posie are offered the opportunity to house-sit a property on the outskirts of Marbella and jump at the chance of a couple of weeks in the sun at Villa Paraiso. Their dreams of an idyllic break don't last long however, the property is run down, the location not what they thought and unexpected guests turn up to carry out an MI5 undercover surveillance operation on the property next door.

With a tightly knit and cleverly executed plot this thriller took me into the heart of the Costa del Crime. The cast of characters was confusing at first but the strength of this novel was in the detail. The location was superbly described and the expat community of Marbella and their disillusionment with the Spanish dream, the influx of Eastern Europeans and criminals who had made this area their home was well depicted.

A good read, an intelligent plot with the tension building to a satisfying conclusion.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A sophisticated, subtle and satisfying thriller 11 Oct 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a well written contemporary thriller which achieves that rare distinction of combining a tense and eventful narrative with engaging and largely credible characters. I think it deserves to become a classic, but I think few will disagree at the very least it's an excellent read.

The story concerns how Winnie Monks - a middle-ranking M15 officer - plots to take revenge on the Russian ex-soldier turned fixer and criminal, who some years previously had brutally killed an M15 field agent. The agent had not only been on Winnie's team but had been lodging with her, so it's all very personal. The Russian travels in secret, his communications protected by a young computer geek, but when the geek is wrongly accused of theft by his boss, he responds by revealing the Russian's plans to hold an important business meeting in a villa near Marbella.

Much of the novel follows how Winnie arranges to have the villa put under surveillance and what happens when the surveillance team unintentionally meet up with a young English couple who have been asked to caretake what Winnie had thought would be an empty house next to the villa in question. The couple become central to the story. At the same time we follow the Russian as he makes his way to Spain via West Africa and Morocco, and get to understand his back-story and that of his accomplices / bodyguards.

The Spanish background is right up-to-date, with the property boom at an end, the British ex-pat community struggling to survive, and corruption endemic. The picture Seymour paints of the extensive high- and low-level criminality is frightening, and whether true or not, it forms a horribly credible backdrop to the story.

Seymour is known for his downbeat endings, but I found the ending to Outsiders to be somewhat more upbeat and overall genuinely satisfying. He avoids the obvious cliché's of the genre, but still leaves us with an exciting denouement, with lives tempered and forever changed by the dreadful events that take place.

My one reservation concerns the character of Winnie herself. I simply couldn't picture her, and it seemed to me that the author might have started of with a somewhat different character in mind to what he ended up with. However, this is a minor issue in what is surely a must for all lovers of the thriller genre.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars The Master storyteller
Good as ever, Seymour moves away slightly from his usual but is still one of the best writers in the world today
Published 1 day ago by m oliver
5.0 out of 5 stars Never disappointed !
Another excellent book by Gerald Seymour. Yet another story that could so easily have really happened - (rather than some far fetched gung ho shoot em up super hero type)... Read more
Published 1 day ago by Golferman
5.0 out of 5 stars gripping stuff
Typically tense Gerald Seymour book. I really enjoyed it. His outcomes can never be predicted but are always feasible. Brilliant.
Published 3 days ago by cornwall48
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent as usual
he always excells himself and is no different in this book
but why was it so expensive surly it would sell more if aroung the £4.95 price. Read more
Published 28 days ago by alicat
5.0 out of 5 stars The best thriller writer.
Seymour is just an amazing writer and always produces a different scenario for each novel he writes. I am always looking forward to his next book.
Published 1 month ago by biggeoffc
5.0 out of 5 stars The outsiders by Gerald Seymour
I am pretty sure I have reviewed this book before. it comes up to the usual standard (excellent) of books by Gerald Seymour. Read more
Published 2 months ago by George
4.0 out of 5 stars Buy anything Seymour
As a matter of course,I buy a new Gerald Seymour as soon as it is published.
Some authors can wait until you can buy cheap.Not so this chap. Read more
Published 2 months ago by READERMAN
4.0 out of 5 stars Complex, interesting, enjoyable
Synopsis/blurb.....

Winnie Monks has never forgotten - or forgiven - the death of a young agent on her team at the hands of a former Russian Army Major turned gangster. Read more
Published 2 months ago by col2910
5.0 out of 5 stars ANOTHER GREAT BOOK
I haven't finished reading this yet but up to know I am sure it's one of his best. Can't put it down. recommend it to any serious reader.
Published 2 months ago by ANN
3.0 out of 5 stars Not as gripping as his previous books.
I have read every book I could find by Gerald Seymour and was most disappointed by this one. It rambles and lacks action and rather wastes what is a good idea for a story.
Published 3 months ago by Roger Maude
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