At Close Quarters [Mass Market Paperback]

Gerald Seymour (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1999

A diplomat and an Israeli master-sniper plan to walk by night into the Beqa'a valley in east Lebanon, home of Palestinian revolutionary groups, in search of one man. They are far into the Beqa'a, out of reach, when their cover is blown and Syrian Intelligence are alerted to their approach.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 460 pages
• Publisher: Corgi (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055214732X
• ISBN-13: 978-0552147323
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,143,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beware Duplicate Titles for the Same Work!, December 30, 2002

By 

Don Graeter "dgraeter" (Prospect, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At Close Quarters (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read most of Seymour's works and found them all to be enthralling page turners. I strongly recommend them. However, the plot description here is identical to An Eye for an Eye which I have already read. I am sure they are the same work published under different titles. I also noticed that another reader found the same situation with Dead Ground and The Waiting Time. Seymour is outstanding, but be careful of buying the same work twice under different titles.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Don't be childish, Holt", May 23, 2002

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: At Close Quarters (Mass Market Paperback)

Jane Canning has a minor spat with her lover Holt. A few minutes later, a lone gunman kills Jane, the personal secretary to the British military attaché in Moscow, along with the British Ambassador to the USSR outside their hotel in Yalta. Holt, the latter's private secretary, sees it all, including a close-up view of the assassin's distinctively scarred face.

Comparing Holt's description of the murderer to a database of surveillance photos, MI6 in London identifies the killer as Palestinian fighter Abu Hamid. Since Jane was also the Secret Intelligence Service's agent in Moscow, the MI6 Director General recruits Holt to accompany Noah Crane, an Anglo-Jewish veteran sniper on loan from the Israeli Army, into Lebanon's dangerous Beqa'a Valley to exact vengeance. The plan is for Crane to shoot Hamid after Holt positively identifies him. Haunted by Jane's last words, "Don't be childish, Holt", the young and inexperienced Third Secretary in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Corps agrees.

AT CLOSE QUARTERS is another in a series of excellent covert action novels by Gerald Seymour whose writing embodies the best of John le Carré and Adam Hall. Le Carré's spy stories emphasize the subtleties of character and plot development, while Hall's focus on the plot twists and close run things that bedevil his hero Quiller through many sagas. In this case, the character evolution is all Holt's as he's chaperoned by the crusty and non-communicative Crane into harm's way. Crane calls Holt "youngster", and instructs him, for survival's sake, to watch everything he does - and learn. It's OJT out on the sharp edge. In the meantime, the intelligence operatives of Syria, Israel and Great Britain are all conniving for better or worse in the background.

In most of the espionage or conspiracy thrillers I've read, the end is nice and tidy, and the hero walks away with the girl. There are no shades of gray in a world once again kept safe for democracy from the diabolical scheming of the Great Unwashed. What I like about Seymour's novels, AT CLOSE QUARTERS included, is that the winners are left almost as damaged as the losers, and the victories won have a certain hollowness. This, I think, is more like real life.