Timebomb

By Gerald Seymour

Book Overview

In 1992, after being fired from a top secret nuclear facility, a KGB operative buried a nuclear suitcase--a dirty bomb. Sixteen years later he has found a buyer. Traveling with the buyer is an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 1444760491
• ISBN13: 9781444760491
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 2.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 1.2" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Typical Seymour - A Great Read

Timebomb is first, topical, and then a gripping read as well. The multidimensional characters are believable and, as always, Gerald Seymour throws in a good deal of personal history to justify their individual motives. The story line moves from one character, or set of characters, to another. This "one to the next to the next" approach is typical for this author and he is superb in his technique. His prose and character dialogue have a distinctive British flavor which I personally find appealing. Enjoy. And then turn to more of his work if you haven't already.

Return to Sobibor

"He is obstinate, aloof, dismissive, cruel, and he is the most effective intelligence officer in that wretched building ... He is honourable, he has honour, and that is not a word often echoing through the corridors of (the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6) ..." Agent runner Christopher Lawson, as described in TIMEBOMB Any thriller by Gerald Seymour is a treat to be savored. And each is topical; it plumbs the deep and dangerous currents flowing across the world at the time of its writing. Here, it's 2008. Two old Russians, ex-KGB major Yashkin and his friend Molenkov, an ex-political officer (zampolit), both unceremoniously discarded by the regime some fifteen years previously, are smuggling a stolen Small Atomic Demolition Munition out of Russia to a buyer in the West for the promise of a million dollars. It had been spirited out of a weapons depot by Yashkin as a hedge against rainy days sure to come immediately after he'd learned he was to be sacked. Now, the handover is to take place on the Bug River, the border between Poland and Belarus. Converging on the rendezvous are the Russian middleman for the sale, the vicious mafiya boss Reuven Weissberg, his London money man, Josef Goldmann, and their entourage of bodyguards, including Johnny Carrick, an undercover operative for the British Serious Crimes Directorate. Almost against his will, Johnny has been seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service for the operation, the MI6 team for which is headed by the aging Cold War warrior, Christopher Lawson, perhaps the most detested executive at the SIS headquarters building at Vauxhall Bridge Cross. Weissberg's approach to life is "trust no one," a philosophy embedded into his soul by the 85-year old grandmother, Anna Weissberg, that raised him and to whom he remains completely dedicated. Anna was a survivor of the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor near the Bug River, having escaped that place during the prisoner uprising of October 1943, one of only two that flared in the entire concentration camp system. I'm constantly amazed at the level of satisfaction I get from reading a Gerald Seymour thriller, yet I'm hard pressed - perhaps just not sufficiently literate or perceptive - to explain why in a way that does the author justice. A storyline of his involves multiple threads, any of which could be considered the main one. TIMEBOMB has three, perhaps four if one includes Anna's memories of Sobibor. All are elegantly woven into the tapestry of the overall tale and lead to a common point, which inevitably is a Pyrrhic victory, from the point of view of conventional Western readers, for the protectors of Free World societies and values. The fact that the win isn't overwhelmingly final flies in the face of most fictional thrillers and is perhaps more reflective of Real Life. The heroes and villains of any Seymour book aren't the Super Heroes and Arch Villains of your standard pot-boiler. There are no Bonds here with their high tech hardware, sexy wom