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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 family

By 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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Philippia Stockley gives great notice to Penny Vincenzi's Almost a Crime in The Washington Post.

"Almost a Crime," an absolute page-turner, is cut from the usual pattern but opens in the 1990s, before the death of Princess Diana, whose presence flickers through the story. Wealthy, handsome couple Octavia and Tom Fleming are the toast of lunching London. Octavia, who has a new baby, runs a successful charity public relations company, while elegant, dark Tom ("His suits were all hand-tailored, and his shoes were handmade") is a political spin doctor. They are the couple who have it all -- one of the first in a long line of extended cliches. But soon Octavia finds a lacy vintage handkerchief in the laundry basket. Tom is having an affair.