Le Carre shoots from the left and Forsyth from the right but Seymour using his excellent journalistic skills allows his readers to make their own moral judgements about what is done by the powers that be to protect the citizens of this country.

Could there be a more topical novel today than 'The Walking Dead' which concerns the hunt for a suicide bomber in the United Kingdom?

Seymour has constructed a multi layered plot with many different strands that all pull together towards a nail biting climax.

The sub plot about the trial of two gangster brothers and the juror who is ripe for currupting seems to have little to do with the story and yet it becomes a vital part of the plot. Likewise the protection officer who is obsessed with a diary from an International Brigade volunteer from the Spannish civil war, yet it is the skill and the depth with which these characters are written that makes his fiction feel so factual.

The most disturbing area in this book is the depiction of a terror suspect being tortured by British Intellegence officers at a WW2 airfield. Here Seymour poses the reader with the moral question of whether such actions are for the greater good and makes us wonder if they really occur within our democracy and for our protection.

This is a novel that makes YOU think and YOU decide, thankfully without the need for the author to make his own politcal statement....and this is where Seymour always triumphs and has done since his first novel'Harry's Game'.

Topical, tough and as unflinching as ever, as with his previous book'Rat Run' this is Gerald Seymour at his best.