Dead Ground

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. THE WAITING TIME 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 THE WAITING TIME, 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

loved the book but as i have read a lot of his books they do start to get predictable but all in all a good read, also the book is known as the wanting time as well

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.

Once the Wall fell and Germany reunited, old enemies became strange bedfellows. Even former members of the Stasi, the East German secret police with a Gestapo heritage, have become acceptable by political and military leaders throughout the West. However, for some friends and lovers of the victims of the Stasi, the memory does not vanish just because a government has. When the British welcomed Doktor Dieter Krause, they never expected an incident. However, upon seeing Dieter, Corporal Tracy Barnes goes berserk and starts punching and kicking the German until his bodyguards finally stop her. Tracy has recognized Dieter as the person whom cold bloodedly murdered her beloved just before East Germany collapsed. She wants vengeance. The British send Albert Perkins, a home duty officer with a special knack at finding out the truth, to investigate the incident. However, Albert will soon learn that Tracy is minor league as the real vengeance seekers go all the way back to Moscow. DEAD GROUND is one of the best espionage thrillers of the year. The story line cleverly combines the elated aftermath of the collapse of the Wall with a tragic love story that brutally ended before the German unification occurred. The characters and their emotions seem so genuine that readers will believe that Gerald Seymour is using real persona. The plot also feels authentic as if officials opened an archive for Mr. Seymour's use. This author is clearly at the top of his game as fans of thrillers and espionage novels will relish this fabulous novel.Harriet Klausner