Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
|
 |
Dead Ground |
List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29 |
 |
|
|
Product Info |
Reviews |
<< 1 >>
Rating:  Summary: names Review: Dead ground is a great read for all spy thriller fans. It has an unexpected plot twist at the end and it lacks the predictability of Clancy novels.
Rating:  Summary: Tedious and trite Review: I wanted to like this novel based on its favorable reviews. I did not; I abandoned it after 100 pages. The characters were stereotypes, the style was rambling and the storyline was transparent.
Rating:  Summary: Author can't write Review: I was hoping that the tale would finally resemble some sort of entertainment as I struggled through each paragraph while trying to sort out the characters and their contibutions to the plot. On and on I was dragged back and forth through confused text that resembled the efforts of numerous authors. I felt cheated because I wasted my time hoping that things would improve as the four star ratings of reviewers suggested. And the ending, a weak and undocumented afterthought to a really terrible novel.
Rating:  Summary: Rambling Prose Review: I was hoping that the tale would finally resemble some sort of entertainment as I struggled through each paragraph while trying to sort out the characters and their contibutions to the plot. On and on I was dragged back and forth through confused text that resembled the efforts of numerous authors. I felt cheated because I wasted my time hoping that things would improve as the four star ratings of reviewers suggested. And the ending, a weak and undocumented afterthought to a really terrible novel.
Rating:  Summary: Great true to life fiction! Review: Like all of the novels written by British writer Gerald Seymour Dead Ground is a top ten. One of those writers who gets better with each book, the story of Tracy and Mantle is one right out of the headlines. Mr. Seympour has a way of maybe not you liking the so called bad guys but can understand them. And if you are a reader who likes a good sharp jab in the eye kind of ending then this and the other works by Mr. Seymmour are right up your alley. A perfect read for when you want to feel a lot for the people in the story and wounder what is was like over there during the time of the Berlin Wall. If you read this novel and love it, then feel free and safe to read his dozen or other novels. If they are hard to get look at Amazon Uk since he is form England and might be easier to get over there. Here in america he is hard to get at the book store once the novel has been out a while and the Computer is a good place to look for him. Even the used book stores are hard to find him. So thanks to Amazon for having him and giving a truely perfect Ten of a read!
Rating:  Summary: Disinterring the past Review: Note: This book is also published under the title THE WAITING TIME.
When revisiting past crimes, be careful what you wish for.
In 1988, the British Army Intelligence Unit in West Berlin, in an unauthorized operation, recruits a young East Berliner, Hans Becker. The go-between is a 22-year old I Corps junior stenographer, Corporal Tracy Barnes, who becomes Becker's lover. Becker is sent by his controller to East Germany's Baltic coast to glean information from radar base signals. There, Hans is captured and brutally murdered by Stasi Counter Espionage Captain Dieter Krause. Barnes suspects Krause's guilt, but can't prove it. And Hans remains the first and only man that Tracy has ever slept with.
Now, it's a decade later. The Berlin Wall is rubble, Germany is re-united, and Dieter Krause is the new darling of the German intelligence service, the BfV, because of the information he can provide on an old friend, Russian Army Colonel Pyotr Rykov, who's the influential personal assistant to the Russian Defense Minister. The Germans are showing Krause off, first to the Brits, then the Yanks. However, during a visit to the I Corps base in Ashford, Kent, Dieter is recognized by Barnes, who physically attacks him. Clapped into the base guardhouse, Tracy is interrogated by a veteran SIS man sent down from London, Albert Perkins of German Desk, but he gets nothing. Released from detention, Barnes goes to Germany to unearth the evidence to bring Dieter down. She's accompanied by Josh Mantle, a solicitor's clerk persuaded to the task by Tracy's mother. Josh, at 54, was once of I Corps, then of the Royal Military Police. Stubbornly his own man and awkwardly dedicated to principles, Mantle was discarded by the Army at the end of the Cold War. Now, he's tired and on the ash heap of imminent old age. Against his better judgement, but always for the underdog, Tracy's dangerous mission demands his participation.
DEAD GROUND at first begins as a relatively simple tale of long-delayed justice. Well, ok, vengeance. But "simplistic" is never an apt description of Gerald Seymour's thrillers. Tracy's implacable, single-minded quest becomes almost a sideshow as Perkins, following Barnes and Mantle to Germany, has his own agenda to put the upstart BfV back into "its place". And another scarred veteran of the Cold War, the iron-haired and intimidating Olive Harris of the SIS Russian Desk, convinces the MI6 wallahs to activate her own scheme, i.e. to topple Pyotr Rykov (which would render Krause's humint pretty much valueless).
I'm a huge fan of Seymour's novels. But, in DEAD GROUND, I reluctantly suggest that the plot is too complicated. He should've left out the Harris gambit and focused solely on Perkins, Mantle, Barnes, and Krause. When Olive arrives in Moscow to administer the coup de grace to Rykov, the local SIS station head asks, "Why are we mounting a hostile operation against Pyotr Rykov? ... Your game is the immediate destruction of a fine man." That just about says it all, and perhaps the only usefulness of the subplot is to illustrate that "our side" (and the gentler sex) can be just as ruthless as "their side" when it comes to destroying a man.
Seymour's forte is showing that victory is often Pyrrhic. The most tragic victor of this story is undoubtedly Mantle, self-crucified on the Cross of Principle. You might think that role would be Tracy's, but, as the reader learns in a surprise ending, she's not what she appears to be through 99% of the novel.
Overall, a jolly good show. But it could have been tighter.
Rating:  Summary: Author can't write Review: Unreadable. The guy writes in short choppy bursts that say absolutely nothing. Don't even bother.
<< 1 >>
|
|
|
|