A Line In The Sand

Gerald Seymour is one of the most skillful writers of espionage fiction. While many of his peers seem flummoxed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the need to find new battles, causes, and villains, he hasn't been constrained by the vagaries of geopolitics. Here he delivers a well-plotted suspense thriller that sets Frank Perry, a seemingly ordinary man with an extraordinary past, against an Iranian assassin, the British secret service, and friends and neighbors in the small Suffolk village where Perry went underground a decade after MI5 blackmailed him into spying on Iran's efforts to perfect chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

Even the woman Perry loves and the young boy they've been raising together don't know that Frank is not the man they thought he was--in fact, he isn't even Frank Perry. Now Iran's search has led the assassin, code-named the Anvil, right to Perry's hiding place, but Frank has drawn a line in the sand, refusing to be frightened into leaving the home and family he's created under an assumed identity. Instead he'll face the Anvil on his own ground. But when the community turns against him, fearing for its own safety, he's more alone than he's ever been. The more they hound him to leave, the more adamant he becomes, despite the increasing danger. The secret service and special forces are supposed to be ensuring his safety, but it seems more like they are staking a goat to lure a predator into a trap than protecting a valuable asset who crippled a rogue nation's terrorist arsenal.

Seymour excels not only in pacing and plotting but also in characterization. Perry is exceptionally well developed, but so is the junior intelligence officer assigned to his case who is wrestling with his own patriotic impulses and the equally compelling allure of a more conventional and remunerative life outside the espionage community. This is a riveting, character-driven story that engages the reader from start to finish. --Jane Adams