Seymour, a former ITN journalist, made his name overnight in 1975 with his bestselling novel Harry's Game, about a British cabinet minister shot by an IRA assassin who is then pursued by an undercover agent. This time it's post the Good Friday agreement, and the Republican die-hards around Dungannon who believe the IRA betrayed their cause decide a major injection of lethal weapons will spur recruitment. In a plot worthy of Le Carré, and in similar convoluted prose, the cast assembles: hard men, touts, MI5 spooks, Russian arms dealers, and a new-wave Republican whose IRA father was killed by Danny Curnow, a former British Army soldier who ran agents and informers. Curnow is drawn back into the MI5 web, and embarks on a tangled tour of Europe which ends with distinctly mixed results.
