Beyond Recall: Sunday Times favourite paperbacks 2020

This is a great book. I couldn't put it down. The characters he builds are interesting and real and the story generates a lot of emotion. Loved the bear.

After the comparatively straightforward 'The Crocodile Hunters' which I liked enormously, I found 'Beyond Recall' difficult to get into early on, with too many back-stories, which I skimmed. Then, I was more and more drawn into the novel, with its superbly realised characters, relationships and locations. It's knife-edge stuff, with themes of survival, adversity, betrayal, courage, loyalty, cruelty, hatred, love. And a bear! I was almost in tears at the end. This is only my second Seymour novel; I'm about to order another.

Another excellent book from Gerald Seymour that had me turning the pages to the end. Couldn’t put it down.

The story is interesting enough. British soldier is back in the Orkneys after getting PTSD witnessing an atrocity in Syria committed by a KGB officer. With the officer rumoured to be in Murmansk, the soldier is tasked to locate him. Which brings into the story the KGB officer's minders, a long inactive sleeper in Murmansk and, more bizarrely, a Soviet deserterwho lived in the tundra and has an oddly mystical relationship with a bear. Throw in dinosaur British spooks and a Syrian shepherdess and there's quite a mix.The story does hang together but this didn't need to be 440 pages. By the end I was just glad to have got it over which isn't really what you want the reading experience to be.

I gobbled this book up. Gerald Seymour combines authenticity of the plot with very accurate descriptions of the settings.Having visited many of the places in Murmansk where much of the story is tailored around, when I read the book, his obvious journalistic skills took me back there.Hauntingly written bringing the main characters to life at each turn of the page.This book has been worth waiting for, and I look forward to re-reading it at a more leisurely pace.A top book by a top author!

A broad canvas , well written as always. The plot involves older more traditional methods of undercover activity in a time where such action is seen as out of date, very contemporary and yet reassuring. A Russian associated with an atrocity in Syria is identified in Murmansk and a plan hatched in London to assassinate him. It does not go to plan, those involved are a very mixed bunch of welldrawn characters and the outcome is surprising, so much so that I almost gave up on it thinking it might be a 'soft' ending. It was not and I was pleased to have read it to the end .A very British tale! I await his next story .

In most of Gerald Seymour's work, there is unsentimental realism, it's here in spades, but, then he weaves complex tales, and we are treated to rare gentleness. Can't say more, would be spoiler alerts! Simply brilliant! If you're already a fan, this is his best for several. If you're a newby to Seymour, this a great one to start with! Indispensable reading for spy/military fans! The master!

This is up there with the best Seymour has ever written. It really is an outstanding thriller that keeps you eating up the pages. The story expertly intercuts the present with an earlier atrocity in a Syrian village. Gaz and Volkov, both soldiers and in their different ways way damaged by past events are the common link. The cast of characters is excellent, from the young couple of drug dealers helping Gaz, a coterie of M16 dinosaurs, a reclusive hunter and even a bear. The setting in Murmansk gives a terrific sense of place. You wouldn’t want to live there. Highly recommended.

A great read

Seymour’s novel takes you there to experience human weaknesses and strengths. One I started reading this book it took me to places I would never visit, yet, I felt part of the unfolding drama. Portraying human emotion beyond description..

This story really wants to have heart, but it somehow rings hollow. Not the best Seymour I’ve read so far.

A savaging of a Syrian village is the core of a rich and complex narrative. That story is given out in bits, intermittently throughout the course of the book. This is interleaved with the story of how a deniable arm of the British Secret Services extracts a degree of payback for the horrible events that happened on that day in that village...the characters are surprisingly real and the denouement occurs in the wilds of the Kola peninsula where the Dutch explorer William Barents perished with his crew some five hundred or so years ago. The thoroughly believable protagonists include Gary (Gaz), a reconnaissance specialist, two loveable young drug pushers from the town of Murmansk in Russia, a backwoodsman by the name of Jasha who has a strange relationship with a bear he calls Zhukov...and many more...the landscapes whether of Syria or of Arctic Russia are described in loving detail as are the thoughts of the principal protagonists.

This is the second Gerald Seymour book the I have read. Love his writing style. It’s a slow burn, but worth it.