A Line in the Sand by
Gerald Seymour
hbk out January 99
Published by Bantam
at £16.99
A former super-salesman lives in a village on the Suffolk coast, under the name Frank Perry. He has a family, friends and a full life. When the Security Service tells him that his secret past has caught up with him, and that he must pack up and move on - again - he refuses. He's finished with running: this time, he's drawing a line in the sand. He will tell his new family the truth about his identity, and trust to love and solidarity to see him through.
This poses a problem for MI5. They know that the Iranian government has
dispatched its most accomplished assassin to kill Perry, in revenge for the role he played, years before, in facilitating a savage Mossad strike against Iran's chemical weapons research programme.
If Perry is unwilling to run, the spooks are obliged to protect him - but their priorities are not necessarily his; they have diplomatic, bureaucratic and political factors to take into account. Worse is to come: as the shadowy threat against Perry's life solidifies, his peaceful, respectable village begins to resemble an armed encampment, which spreads fear and anger amongst his neighbours. (This, I feel, is the only aspect of the book which doesn't quite work. The uniformly craven response of Perry's fair-weather friends to his troubles
doesn't ring true: it represents a level of misanthropy on the author's part which, it seemed to me, was directed by the needs of the narrative rather than coming from Seymour's heart.)
By now, it's too late for Perry to change his mind, to redraw his line in the sand even if he wanted to, because his supposed guardians have come up with a new strategy, one which places more emphasis on the fate of the assassin than that of his intended victim.
Seymour is the kind of thriller writer who prefers to explore human
psychology than to show off his knowledge of inhuman hardware. Here his theme is the nature of loyalty and betrayal, the roots of courage and cowardice - and the way in which even those of us who live quiet, unremarkable lives, nonetheless live one life in public and another in private. A Line In The Sand is a very serious and moving novel, full of grand, almost fable-like concerns, and at the same time a nerve-shredding, read-it-at-one-gulp, merciless great bastard of a thriller. Even if you don't usually enjoy espionage stories, I urge you to take a chance on this one. No writer is ever entirely happy with his finished product, but Gerald Seymour would have to be an insecure man indeed not to feel that with this book he has accomplished almost everything that he set out to achieve.
A Line in the Sand by
Gerald Seymour