Untouchable

by Gerald Seymour

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0552148164
• ISBN13: 9780552148160
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Corgi Books
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Hey, Mister! Looking for a good time?

After featuring spies, political terrorists, assassins, and mercenaries during the 70s, 80s and 90s, author Gerald Seymour welcomes us to the new millennium with a crime kingpin toting cellphone and international ambitions.Albert William Packer, known to all and addressed as "Mister", has ruthlessly climbed to the top of London's drug trade. Mister isn't above personally chainsawing the legs or snipping the fingers off rivals. His only friends are his wife, The Princess, and his chief lieutenant, The Cruncher.Through bribery and witness intimidation, Mister has just evaded conviction by Crown prosecutors on evidence gathered during a 3-year investigation by Customs & Excise, otherwise known as "the Church". Mister considers himself untouchable by the law.While Packer was in custody awaiting the Old Bailey's verdict, the Cruncher was off in the Balkans preparing the ground for Mister's expansion into the overseas heroin trade. Now, Mister is free, but the Cruncher is dead, his body having mysteriously turned up in the river that runs through Sarajevo. So, with a couple of hired hands, including his lawyer, Packer sets out for Sarajevo to finish uncompleted business. He's trailed by Joey Cann, the most junior member of the new Church action group tasked with gathering the evidence necessary to bring Mister down. Cann is accompanied by a covert surveillance specialist on loan from MI6, Maggie Bolton. Cann is the only representative from the previous Church team, since disbanded in disgrace, that recently failed to put Mister permanently away. Joey is obsessed with his quarry, and is determined not to fail this time out. While Packer may be the biggest fish in the small pool that's England, he's swimming an even bigger pond now, and is perhaps liable to mistakes.There's another thread in THE UNTOUCHABLE that seems irrelevant. Beginning with a flashback to autumn 1991, and then moving forward in increments of months, the reader follows developments in a rural, Balkan river valley, one side Moslem, the other side Christian Serb. As the two populations embark on the vicious ethnic cleansing that stretched into the mid-90s, we watch the genesis and evolution of the minefield laid down on the Serb side of the river. The years pass, and the mines are washed into new positions by the rain. The minefield is almost a living thing, changing shape while maiming or killing whatever man or beast ventures into it even after the wider conflict ceases.Seymour is, and remains, one of my very favorite authors. But, in THE UNTOUCHABLE, he makes no effort to make his protagonist, Joey Cann, in any way likable. Joey is an unsociable, driven geek with a bad attitude. Maggie might have been the more sympathetic "hero", but the author chooses not to go there. On the other hand, Mister is, on very rare occasions, almost engaging when he's not being a vicious SOB.Cann's final confrontation with Mister is one of the most imaginative I've read in awhile, and, coming from an a

A Powerful Book of Suspense

Albert William Packer, known to everyone as `Mister' if they know what's good for them, is the so-called Untouchable crime boss whose reach is profoundly wide and whose evilness seems to know no bounds. He has reached the pinnacle with regard to power and wealth, and so he hungrily casts around for international avenues to expand his drug dealing empire. His specific target is Sarajevo in war-ravaged Bosnia.Joey Cann is the most junior member of the Customs and Excise team who are investigating Mister in the hopes of bringing him down. Yet he is chosen to follow Mister to Bosnia to Bosnia with the mission being the gathering of intelligence that may help to incriminate him. To help Joey, who has never been out of England, let alone to a war-ravaged, dangerous country, he is teamed up with Maggie Bolton, a communications expert. Not only that, she is also wise to the ways of Sarajevo and reluctantly, acts as Joey's minder.While this main story of dangerous hide and seek unfolds, we are treated to a chronicle of atrocities carried on over the war years in a small Bosnian valley. We learn how the war affected a pair of neighbours and how their land was turned into a deadly minefield. This background story brings to life the grim realities of war and the terrible, lasting toll it takes on innocent people. I felt that this parallel story gave amazing insight into the way war affects everyone and also, just how lasting the effects are on those who are directly touched by it. I wouldn't call this a thriller or a mystery book. Rather, it is a book of suspense where the hunter appears to be hopelessly underpowered against a ruthless, cold and malicious quarry. You know that one false step will bring a devastating retribution. It's a powerful book and well worth reading.