Condition Black: A Novel

By Gerald Seymour

Book Overview

With Condition Black Gerald Seymour comes into his own as . . . one of the most professional practitioners of the British political thriller. ( The New York Times. Set in the Middle East and completed just before the invasion of Kuwait, in Condition Black Seymour intertwines two plot threads that prove him to be a prophet of today's headlines.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688106315
• ISBN13: 9780688106317
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.0" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Hardball executive recruiting

Author Gerald Seymour defines CONDITION BLACK as "a lethal assault in progress".This novel superficially resembles another of Seymour's books, LINE IN THE SAND. In the latter, the Iranians send their master assassin onto English soil to do a wet job. On his trail are representatives from a ragtag bunch of British security and law enforcement agencies, plus an expert Scottish tracker and his dogs. In CONDITION BLACK, the villain is a young English mercenary in Iraq's employ, Colt. He's already killed an Iraqi dissident and his CIA contact in Athens. Now, he's going back to his island home to do another hit - and visit his dying Mum. There's the usual posse of pursuers and kibitzers: MI6, MI5, Scotland Yard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Mossad. Chief among them is FBI agent Bill Erlich, out to avenge the murder of his good friend, the CIA agent in Athens. Erlich is young and ambitious. He sees a successful outcome to the chase as a step up the rung of the advancement ladder. To his principle British minder, James Rutherford of MI5, Erlich is "Buffalo Bill", a cowboy with a quick draw mentality.What could be a simple storyline is made more complex by another task assigned Colt by his Iraqi handlers once he's on home soil. By the way, Colt, how about stopping by Her Majesty's Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston and recruit one of it's scientists to turn traitor and work for the Iraqi nuclear weapons program? Why sure, chief, no problem.Gerald Seymour is my very favorite creator of spy/conspiracy potboilers. However, I can't quite award five stars for CONDITION BLACK. It seemed the author was overreaching when he assigned two very different roles to Colt. Though not impossible - and what do I know? - it would seem more plausible that assassination and agent recruitment are two very disparate talents not likely resident in a single operative, much less one as unsophisticated as Colt. And the ending was vaguely unsatisfying, though it was consistent with Seymour's first class strength, which is crafting his plots consistent with grubby, unheroic real life, in which the winners and losers are rarely clear cut.