Customer Reviews

The Collaborator

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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Seymour is one of my favorite authors, but I was slow to read this book. His last couple books had disapointed, and this one sounded like a re-hash of his earlier book Killing Ground. But The Collaboroator turned out to be Seymour's best book in some years. The style is very much reminiscent of his earlier books from the 1970s and '80s and is more of a tightly plotted thriller than his more recent books like Timebomb or The Walking Dead, which were tedious, slow, strangely structured, and anti-climatic. The plotting and supsense here are tight. The characters, including Italian law enforcement officers, an American hostage negoitator, the Camorra members, and the young women who will give evidence against her criminal family, are the best of Seymour's more recent books and refreshing and much more convincing than the large number of generic MI6 people and Islamic terrorists who have populated the last few books. Only problem is that the book is way too long for such a fairly simple, small scale story with a small cast of characters. Cutitng the narrative down a bit would have made a much tighter, faster story, but The Collaborator is still Seymour's best book in years and hopefully his next book will follow this style. It's rare to find an intelligent, realistic, well-written, entertaining thriller these days, so thankfully Seymour, after a couple duds, is still doing it.

It's a long time since I've read a Gerald Seymour novel and I picked this one up on a whim when browsing in my local store. What a terrific decision that was, whilst this is a hefty read at over 500 pages I flew through it.

Eddie Deacon, a language teacher and an ordinary sort of guy has met and fallen in love with a girl. Can't believe his luck that a girl like Immacolata Borelli would even look twice at him. She's beautiful, Italian and she cooks a mean pasta. Then suddenly she's gone, back to her native Naples. But Eddie isn't going to give up that easily and he sets off to find her.

What Eddie doesn't know about Immacolata is that the Borelli's are a powerful Camorra clan who rule their territory with violence and terror. Immacolata has committed the ultimate sin and turned informant against her family and is in hiding under the protection of the Palace of Justice. Eddie has no protection at all.

The tension builds well and the clan controlled areas of Naples are well depicted bringing the atmosphere and menace of the streets to life. I found myself totally absorbed and horrified as Eddie roamed the streets of Naples asking questions of the locals completely oblivious of what he was walking into. The characters are realistic and well drawn, the pace good and the ending worth every page it took to get there.

A great read, unconditionally recommended

In London, Italian Immacolata Borelli attends school for a degree in accounting. When she learns of the death of her best friend Marianna Rossetti from leukemia, Immacolata flies to Naples to attend the funeral. However, Marianna's grieving raging parents treat her with scorn even spitting on her. They blame their daughter's death on the Borelli crime family that belongs to the vicious Camorra network of families; her kin controls Naples whose trucks dumped toxic material in the fields and waters.

Immacolata is traumatized by the experience and believes redemption is in order for her implicit failure to acknowledge the harm her family causes. She returns to London where she calls the Palace of Justice in Naples offering her services as an informant turning in her family. Speciale Investigator Mario Castrolami works the Camorra case; he understands the danger Immacolata will face as the mob will kill anyone who betrays them; collateral damage being acceptable. On the other hand Immacolata failed to consider her English boyfriend Eddie Deacon a teacher; as ruthless "Il Pistole" enforces the mob rules, which means killing any informer even the daughter of a cherished leader.

This is a great suspense thriller as the reader anticipates with each spin an OK Corral confrontation on the streets of Naples and perhaps London. Fast-paced with a strong cast on all sides of the law, Immacolata makes the tale as the title character who expects to die but believes she is finally doing the morally correct thing.

Harriet Klausner

The Collaborator is aptly categorized as a thriller. Once I began reading I had difficulty in setting the book aside. At great risk to herself--and to her boyfriend, as she learns later--Immacolata Borelli makes the decision to inform on her murderous mobster family in Naples, Italy. She takes this course after attending the funeral of her best friend in Naples, and discovering that her friend died as a result of exposure to toxic chemicals in her environment. One of the many "businesses" of the Borelli clan is illegal dumping of toxic wastes--wherever it's convenient. To say that her family is upset doesn't describe their reaction, which is to try to do whatever it takes to find her and kill her. She is under very capable protection by the city prosecutor; however, her unwitting boyfriend Eddie whom she met in England, and abruptly left, comes to Naples to try to find her. The Borellis abduct him and threaten to mail pieces of him to the police unless she backs off. A third character, a highly-skilled American hostage negotiator, becomes involved to try to find and save Eddie. The tension is drawn slowly and tightly. One of the best aspects of the book is the description of the awful and corrupting influence of the Borelli clan on the citizens of Naples, who live in terror of even saying something disrespectful of the mobsters, much less defying them. The price for not submitting is bloody torture, mutilation, and death. They have a virtual stranglehold on the people of the city. Unlike the book/movie The Godfather,which glamorizes mobsters, author Gerald Seymour shows us what they actually are and just how pervasively destructive they can be to an entire population. To quote one U.S. mob investigator, ..."with few exceptions they are simply animals...the difference between you and them is that they can walk up to a perfect stranger, put a gun to his head, look him in the eye, and pull the trigger." Immacolata Borelli demonstrates the courage it takes to face up to and destroy such evil creatures.

Gripping. Period. Not pretty for the most part, but you're not likely to put it down! Engrossing characters and a finely drawn plot. I read it a few months ago and get a few chills thinking about it. In the end, not grea literature, but if you want a crime/mafia thriller, this might fit the bill.