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Heart of Danger
Seymour's latest topical thriller proves that a good writer can find believable material in what most of us look on as CNN horror footage. Seymour has written fine thrillers set in such troubled terrains as Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Afghanistan. This time the killing ground is Croatia, where the body of a young Englishwoman is found in a mass grave. Her mother hires David Penn, an ex-serviceman and failed intelligence agent, to find out why she died.
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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209 people want to read
About the author
Gerald Seymour
99 books289 followersGerald Seymour (born 25 November 1941 in Guildford, Surrey) is a British writer.
The son of two literary figures, he was educated at Kelly College at Tavistock in Devon and took a BA Hons degree in Modern History at University College London. Initially a journalist, he joined ITN in 1963, covering such topics as the Great Train Robbery, Vietnam, Ireland, the Munich Olympics massacre, Germany's Red Army, Italy's Red Brigades and Palestinian militant groups. His first book, Harry's Game, was published in 1975, and Seymour then became a full-time novelist, living in the West Country. In 1999, he featured in the Oscar-winning television film, One Day in September, which portrayed the Munich Olympics massacre.
Television adaptations have been made of his books Harry's Game, The Glory Boys, The Contract, Red Fox, Field Of Blood, A Line In The Sand and The Waiting Time.
The son of two literary figures, he was educated at Kelly College at Tavistock in Devon and took a BA Hons degree in Modern History at University College London. Initially a journalist, he joined ITN in 1963, covering such topics as the Great Train Robbery, Vietnam, Ireland, the Munich Olympics massacre, Germany's Red Army, Italy's Red Brigades and Palestinian militant groups. His first book, Harry's Game, was published in 1975, and Seymour then became a full-time novelist, living in the West Country. In 1999, he featured in the Oscar-winning television film, One Day in September, which portrayed the Munich Olympics massacre.
Television adaptations have been made of his books Harry's Game, The Glory Boys, The Contract, Red Fox, Field Of Blood, A Line In The Sand and The Waiting Time.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
September 12, 2019
Gerald Seymour's "The Heart of Danger", published in 1995, is a sweeping indictment of the atrocities of the war in the Balkans in the 1990s. The story is told through several 'bit players' in a small piece of the territory at war. So it's a big theme expressed through the little people on the front lines, an approach Seymour does so well.
The main character, Bill Penn, is a private investigator mainly because he's not good enough to do anything else. He washed out of intelligence training and is just trying to keep his career afloat. He's brought in to investigate the death of a young British woman whose body was identified in a mass grave in the Balkans. She had been knifed, beaten, and shot. Her mother, of the moneyed and political class, wants to know specifically what happened to her, yet goes out of her way to denigrate her as a bad seed to anyone who'll listen. Penn listens, takes the job which entails a harrowing trip to the former Yugoslavia, and eventually discovers the truth. Unfortunately for him, in doing so he learns that the young woman was revered among the people she worked with and seemingly falls in love with her memory.
Anyone who was of age in that period probably recalls the mess that the fighting between the Serbs and the Croats created in that part of the world. Heart of Danger brings it down to a more personal level. The savagery and lack of respect for life among the fighters were sickening to watch on the nightly news and Seymour animates it among his characters. It ain't pretty.
Heart of Danger has a very dark feel to it. Seymour's trademark switching of the POV among his characters is present and his writing is as strong as ever. My only issues with the book, other than it's downbeat feel and density, was the overly dramatic tone in many spots and the unlikeliness of the action sequences actually concluding as they did, but overall this is a great book about a tough subject written by a master of the trade.
The main character, Bill Penn, is a private investigator mainly because he's not good enough to do anything else. He washed out of intelligence training and is just trying to keep his career afloat. He's brought in to investigate the death of a young British woman whose body was identified in a mass grave in the Balkans. She had been knifed, beaten, and shot. Her mother, of the moneyed and political class, wants to know specifically what happened to her, yet goes out of her way to denigrate her as a bad seed to anyone who'll listen. Penn listens, takes the job which entails a harrowing trip to the former Yugoslavia, and eventually discovers the truth. Unfortunately for him, in doing so he learns that the young woman was revered among the people she worked with and seemingly falls in love with her memory.
Anyone who was of age in that period probably recalls the mess that the fighting between the Serbs and the Croats created in that part of the world. Heart of Danger brings it down to a more personal level. The savagery and lack of respect for life among the fighters were sickening to watch on the nightly news and Seymour animates it among his characters. It ain't pretty.
Heart of Danger has a very dark feel to it. Seymour's trademark switching of the POV among his characters is present and his writing is as strong as ever. My only issues with the book, other than it's downbeat feel and density, was the overly dramatic tone in many spots and the unlikeliness of the action sequences actually concluding as they did, but overall this is a great book about a tough subject written by a master of the trade.
April 5, 2024
A cashiered intelligence agent turned private investigator is sent deep in to the Balkans to investigate the murder of a spoiled English girl. It's difficult enough to sort out the various contending armed and peacekeeping forces in this book, but when you add in the indecipherable geography which is the setting, the reading becomes very difficult indeed. To top it all off, I was never able to understand what motivated the hero, Bill Penn, to do the things he did. All in all, not one of Seymour's better efforts.
December 13, 2015
Gerald Seymour is one of my favourite authors. I thought I had read all his books, and was thrilled to find this previously unread title in a second-hand shop.
The characterisation and atmosphere is excellent, as usual, but I found this one rather too long, too drawn-out.
However, I still enjoyed it. Just not as much as his others.
The characterisation and atmosphere is excellent, as usual, but I found this one rather too long, too drawn-out.
However, I still enjoyed it. Just not as much as his others.
June 9, 2017
It was so tragic and sad. My gosh. Full review to come.
3.5
3.5
December 29, 2021
Gerald Seymour’s 1995 novel is another one of his authentic thrillers touching upon a gut-wrenching contemporary issue – this time, the Bosnian conflict.
Seymour uses a framing device – an SIS official is reviewing a particular file of events that occurred a couple of years earlier, in 1993. Bill Penn, an MI5 agent who was dismissed, now works as a private investigator – mainly chasing debts and errant husbands and wives. Then he is hired by Mary Braddock. Her daughter Dorrie went missing in 1991 and her body has just been exhumed from a field’s mass grave in former Yugoslovia. Mrs Braddock wants to know how and why Dorrie died.
What begins as a lucrative easy task develops into something darker and more meaningful and moving. Gradually, Penn gets to know the late Dorrie through witness statements. Dorrie’s mother had despaired of her daughter; they’d constantly been at loggerheads. Yet this wasn’t the young woman Penn learned about.
‘It’s always the people who are smug and complacent who send young men across rivers, through minefields, into the heart of danger, and in their arrogance they never pause to consider the consequences.’ (p322)
Despite official censure, Penn goes behind enemy lines in a bid to not only to seek the truth about Dorrie’s brutal death but also to bring to justice the person responsible.
This is a grim tale, with the raw background of a dirty little war that featured genocide and ethnic cleansing. Towards the end it gets extremely tense and harrowing.
Heart-breaking in many instances.
Note: Penn uses a mercenary called Ham as a helper. What’s interesting is that Seymour uses an ex-special forces character called Ham in his 2003 thriller Traitor’s Kiss; and not the same guy!
Seymour uses a framing device – an SIS official is reviewing a particular file of events that occurred a couple of years earlier, in 1993. Bill Penn, an MI5 agent who was dismissed, now works as a private investigator – mainly chasing debts and errant husbands and wives. Then he is hired by Mary Braddock. Her daughter Dorrie went missing in 1991 and her body has just been exhumed from a field’s mass grave in former Yugoslovia. Mrs Braddock wants to know how and why Dorrie died.
What begins as a lucrative easy task develops into something darker and more meaningful and moving. Gradually, Penn gets to know the late Dorrie through witness statements. Dorrie’s mother had despaired of her daughter; they’d constantly been at loggerheads. Yet this wasn’t the young woman Penn learned about.
‘It’s always the people who are smug and complacent who send young men across rivers, through minefields, into the heart of danger, and in their arrogance they never pause to consider the consequences.’ (p322)
Despite official censure, Penn goes behind enemy lines in a bid to not only to seek the truth about Dorrie’s brutal death but also to bring to justice the person responsible.
This is a grim tale, with the raw background of a dirty little war that featured genocide and ethnic cleansing. Towards the end it gets extremely tense and harrowing.
Heart-breaking in many instances.
Note: Penn uses a mercenary called Ham as a helper. What’s interesting is that Seymour uses an ex-special forces character called Ham in his 2003 thriller Traitor’s Kiss; and not the same guy!
February 19, 2021
"Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate politics. they corrupt morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice."
You know its going to be great when an Edmund Burke quote is used to introduce a novel, and now that great writer of moral outrage Seymour gets stuck into the Yugoslavian racial war. Always love how Seymour writes the thriller based on the "real" major issues lesser writers could not begin to do justice to, and stay well away from, be it the 'ndrangeta, Marseilles slums, Kurdistan badlands, Northern Ireland and of course this, the worst European conflict since WWII. If it has happened, Seymour covers it in his works, as the former reporter he is.
Written before the UN started messing things up by taking sides, this covers the true horror and mess of ethnic fighting, before Srebrineca, but covering the same topics, of genocidal vengeance. Heartbreaking as always.
Has the classic Seymour motifs, that the on the surface "boring, unremarkable" types are those that are capable of unthinkable heroism, that true heroism is often based on stubbornness and moral anger. But now with the added thrill that parents often do not know their children best, or how they really are outside the family bubble. And it is brilliant.
You know its going to be great when an Edmund Burke quote is used to introduce a novel, and now that great writer of moral outrage Seymour gets stuck into the Yugoslavian racial war. Always love how Seymour writes the thriller based on the "real" major issues lesser writers could not begin to do justice to, and stay well away from, be it the 'ndrangeta, Marseilles slums, Kurdistan badlands, Northern Ireland and of course this, the worst European conflict since WWII. If it has happened, Seymour covers it in his works, as the former reporter he is.
Written before the UN started messing things up by taking sides, this covers the true horror and mess of ethnic fighting, before Srebrineca, but covering the same topics, of genocidal vengeance. Heartbreaking as always.
Has the classic Seymour motifs, that the on the surface "boring, unremarkable" types are those that are capable of unthinkable heroism, that true heroism is often based on stubbornness and moral anger. But now with the added thrill that parents often do not know their children best, or how they really are outside the family bubble. And it is brilliant.
September 4, 2022
Not a review but just some comments.
I found this a really difficult read. The story was both harrowing and gripping. I'm not sure I enjoyed the writing style but I was gripped to see it through to the end.
The tension built throughout the book and I despaired at the institutes and government departments lack of any common sense and willingness to sacrifice anybody for the sake on a name on a peace treaty. Peace at all costs doesn't sit well with me.
I found this a really difficult read. The story was both harrowing and gripping. I'm not sure I enjoyed the writing style but I was gripped to see it through to the end.
The tension built throughout the book and I despaired at the institutes and government departments lack of any common sense and willingness to sacrifice anybody for the sake on a name on a peace treaty. Peace at all costs doesn't sit well with me.
September 9, 2021
I have almost run out of superlatives to describe Gerald’s books. Reading them is incredibly intense and absorbing.
The characters so vividly drawn, the tone so atmospheric: I feel as though I am right there at the elbow of the characters.
The characters so vividly drawn, the tone so atmospheric: I feel as though I am right there at the elbow of the characters.
June 18, 2022
A difficult book to read at times. The savagery and hatred are at times intense as is the sense of confusion and the manipulation of the misery for personal gain.
A worthwhile if sometimes upsetting read.
A worthwhile if sometimes upsetting read.
May 7, 2024
Densely written; in each new section the reader needs to pay close attention, in order to know which character is being described. Mass graves & a psychotic leader in the Balkans. I ended up paging through much of the second half of the novel.
June 29, 2017
A touching tale of misperceptions, the cruelties of war and the inadequacies of legislation. Gripping and compelling
April 26, 2021
8/10 20% SH. Jumbled start and poor ending but a very good thriller about war crimes in the Balkans.
June 9, 2021
My first & last Gerald Seymour book. Really interesting story line, that he manages to ruin through poor writing & about an extra 100 pages. Wanted to give up so many times, I just wish I had.
July 17, 2023
Not a good ending. I expected more
July 12, 2025
Hard going.
November 2, 2019
This is my first book of this author.
I struggled with this book! It’s painfully slow yet I fount it hard to give it up.....
Paints a very real, sad and brutal truth of war, though written/published in 1995, can easily apply and related to the current war refugee crisis situation in many parts of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
That said however, I feel the story could do with a tighter, condensed version to move the pace faster, but this is purely my personal viewpoint.
I struggled with this book! It’s painfully slow yet I fount it hard to give it up.....
Paints a very real, sad and brutal truth of war, though written/published in 1995, can easily apply and related to the current war refugee crisis situation in many parts of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
That said however, I feel the story could do with a tighter, condensed version to move the pace faster, but this is purely my personal viewpoint.
January 11, 2015
I think if I had tried to read this piecemeal I would have struggled with all the sub-plots and political background. However, reading it on holiday meant I could read it in big chunks and get swept away by the action. I must admit I skimmed some of the more descriptive bits and didn't completely follow all the detail regarding the political factions. The main plot following Penn was a good one, reminiscent of Alastair Maclean.
May 24, 2008
Wow, just wow. An amazing tale of human tragedy, it goes straight into my top ten all time books list.
March 17, 2010
This is the first book I read of his....very powerful, set in post war croatia.....a sad, believable story. Very good read.
November 22, 2014
Hard work
January 28, 2015
Too many points of view telling the story - and the hero and the villain disappear, presumably dead at the end of the story, so ultimately unsatisfying.
June 15, 2015
A part of the world that I did not really know enough about. Low key compared to some of his books but still gripping climax.
June 6, 2016
BORING AS HELL
September 19, 2016
Finally, a Gerald Seymour book that failed to satisfy.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews