Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English (Bloomsbury) has made the shortlist of the £10,000 Guardian First Book Award, equaling its achievement on the Man Booker Prize this year, with Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (And Other Stories) also making the final five.
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By: John Mark Boling,
on 3/23/2011
Gerald Seymour's masterly new novel The Collaborator continues to draw critical acclaim. Library Journal gives a starred review, and the St. Louis Times-Dispatch offers a glowing critique to Seymour's latest thriller.
"Happy-go-lucky Eddie Deacon, a 27-year-old teacher of English to foreigners, meets and falls in love with Immacolata, a young Italian studying accounting in London. When she disappears, having returned to Naples to collaborate with the Carabinieri, Eddie decides to track her down. But she's never told him her last name, and, even if she had, most likely he would not have connected her to the criminal underworld of the Neapolitan Camorra. But as a daughter of the Borelli family, she participated in a host of illegal activities, one of which, the dumping of toxic chemicals, is responsible for the death of her best friend. When Eddie stumbles into the family's hands, his life is on the line. Either Immacolata refuses to testify against them or Eddie dies—and not even a renowned hostage negotiator will suffice to save the lives of all involved. Seymour's (Harry's Game; The Walking Dead) 26th novel builds relentlessly to a fever-pitch conclusion in which a Camorra killer, a hostage rescuer, and a kidnapped victim—characters developed with consummate skill—are all one step from death. Highly recommended for thriller readers. - Library Journal
"British author Gerald Seymour has built a following with his two-dozen-plus crime thrillers. Some critics rank him with John le Carré and Frederick Forsyth as a master of suspense. But with "The Collaborator," Seymour moves beyond suspense. Yes, the plot teems with criminals, and yes, the climax features a face-off between a negotiator and a bad guy who has a pistol and a hostage. But no, "The Collaborator" isn't just another thriller. At its heart, this tale is a novel.
The starring role goes to Immacolata Borelli, who's studying accounting in London. She plans to put her schooling to work back home in Naples, where her family runs mob rackets that include squeezing protection money from neighborhood merchants.
But Immacolata gets a shock when her best friend in Italy dies of leukemia. The disease had its roots in the toxic industrial waste that Immacolota's family trucks in from northern Italy and dumps across the countryside around Naples. So stricken is Immacolata that she flies home, checks in with prosecutors and the police and says she's ready to turn on her family. Back in London, her disappearance dismays her British boyfriend, Eddie Deacon. He flies to Naples to track her down. Trouble is, a stranger who pops up in Naples and asks for directions to a mob family quickly becomes a marked man. The mob family's hit man snatches Deacon and gets a message to authorities: Either you drop Immacolata as an informer, or we kill Deacon.
Unlike so many suspense thrillers, "The Collaborator" follows a plot that's distressingly realistic. This tale has no weapons of mass destruction, no international schemes — just grubby, real-life, low-life crime. Seymour takes readers far deeper into his characters than do most thriller writers. And by the standards of the genre, the book's 500-page length amounts to a thriller and a half." - St. Louis Times-Dispatch
By: John Mark Boling,
on 2/23/2011
Gerald Seymour's novels are all intricately plotted and beautifully detailed--it's why we love publishing them. We were glad to see the Washington Post agree with us this weekend, calling his latest novel, THE COLLABORATOR, "powerful" and adding to their wonderful review that "no summary can suggest its depth and texture."
International suspense fans, take note! Full review below.
'The Collaborator': Taking on a modern-day Italian crime familyBy Patrick Anderson
Monday, February 21, 2011; C02
Immacolata Borelli, the quasi-heroine of Gerald Seymour's powerful new novel, is 25, tough, gorgeous and exceedingly spoiled. She's spoiled because she's the beloved daughter of the leaders of one of the most powerful and ruthless crime families in Naples.
When we meet her, however, she's in London, and the family has problems. She's there to babysit her brother, who's living under an assumed name because he faces murder charges in Italy, and also so she can study accounting, the better to help manage the family fortune. Her father, the head of the crime family that his parents started during World War II, is in prison. But, not to worry, Immacolata's mother, who makes Lady Macbeth took like Mary Poppins, is running the family business quite well, with the assistance of an assassin called Il Pistole, who modestly admits, "I have killed more than forty men. I do not know exactly how many men because it is not important to me."
One day, walking in a London park, Immacolata meets a nice young man named Eddie Deacon, a teacher of English, and soon is sharing his bed and fixing him excellent Italian meals. Then she receives word that her best friend back in Italy has died. Knowing no details, she catches the first plane and hurries to the cemetery, expecting to be greeted warmly by her friend's grieving family. Instead, they call her a whore, knock her to the ground, spit on her and furiously explain that their daughter died of leukemia caused by the toxic wastes that Immacolata's family had for years been dumping near their village, a sideline that earned them tens of millions of euros.
Traumatized by her friend's death and this hatred, Immacolata returns to London and reaches a fateful decision: Her family is evil, and she will bring them down by telling all she knows to Italian prosecutors. Her family will disown her, of course, and have her killed if they can penetrate the protection the authorities will give her, but she boldly returns to Italy to send her mother, brothers, grandparents and several of their hired guns to prison.
She leaves London without saying goodbye to Eddie, who has no idea that she's part of a crime family. The poor fool is in love, so naturally he hops a plane to Naples and hastens to the Forcella neighborhood that her family holds in its iron grip. It's a great come-into-my-parlor moment. The family takes him pris
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