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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Redemption for Johnny, 15 Jan 2006
CONTRACT should be an object lesson to men on the perils of loving the wrong woman, although I'm sure author Gerald Seymour didn't intend it as such.It's around 1980 in Switzerland, and a junior diplomat in the Soviet Embassy in Geneva, Willi Guttmann, is infatuated with an English girl working for the World Health Organization. And she claims she's pregnant. Honorable and smitten - mostly the latter - Willi stages a boating accident on Lake Geneva. Under the ruse of having drowned, he defects to England so he can be joined forever with his beloved. During Guttmann's debrief, MI6 learns that, while Willi has no inherent value, his father Otto is the brain behind a new, Soviet, anti-tank weapon. Using Willi as bait, the Secret Service hatches a plot to lure the 70-year old scientist into defecting to the West during an upcoming holiday that the old man will be taking with daughter Erica near the West German border. MI6 contracts with Johnny Donoghue to be point man in the extraction. Seymour's thrillers are notable for their lack of clear-cut winners and losers in whatever confrontation is played out. CONTRACT has more tragic figures than any of the author's other books I've read. Donoghue is an ex-Army officer, cashiered after having mistakenly shot an innocent young woman while on surveillance duty in Northern Ireland. The court acquitted him of murder, but his career and reputation were ruined. Johnny now craves redemption with the government that gave him the boot. There's silly Willi, who has no idea of the misery he will cause. There's Erica, a spinster-in-training, who has no life but to care for her frail father. Then there's Ulf, a young East German recently demobbed from duty with the border guards. Ulf's in love with Jutte, and she's cajoled him into a joint bolt over the wire. Not tragic, but just bitter, is the anonymous functionary in the West German Federal Internal Security Service, who's still smarting from his treatment at the hands of the Brits at the end of WWII. He'll show them. I've been raving about Gerald Seymour for years. He's equal to, if not better than, John le Carre in his ability to conjure up an entertaining espionage caper. His plots don't bog down, and his characters are eminently believable - just regular blokes with bills to pay, aging bodies, lackluster careers and/or nagging spouses endeavoring to do their duty to Queen and country, or their conscience, amidst perilous situations in grotty places. Sounds like a regular 9 to 5 to me.
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by Gerald Seymour
by Gerald Seymour
by Gerald Seymour
by Gerald Seymour
by Gerald Seymour
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