Jonas Merrick Novels - Gerald Seymour

Written by Gerald Seymour
Read by Ben Allen
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The Jonas Merrick series by Gerald Seymour is a slow-burn intelligence thriller series centered on an unlikely protagonist. Unlike classic, suave spy archetypes, Jonas Merrick is an unassuming, middle-aged MI5 analyst who spent decades behind a desk. Mocked by younger, field-ready colleagues as the “Eternal Flame” (because he never goes out), Merrick is quiet, fussy, and meticulous. However, his obsession with minute detail, procedural patience, and cold-blooded tactical mind make him deadly effective when piecing together hidden threats. The series focuses on the human cost of intelligence work rather than Hollywood-style gunfights.

The Crocodile Hunter – In the office at MI5 where he works, they call Jonas Merrick ‘the eternal flame’. It isn’t a compliment. It’s because he never goes out. He never goes undercover, never does surveillance, never goes with the teams that kick down the doors or seize the suspects off the street. He commutes into work and sits at his desk and then he goes home. But Jonas has qualities the hot-shots fail to notice: a steely concentration, a ruthless ability to focus and find the enemy hiding in plain sight. Hearing of a British Jihadi returning from Syria with murderous plans, Jonas sends out for a telling photograph: a crocodile, almost submerged, just its eyes above water as it waits for unsuspecting prey to drink at the riverbank. Coming ashore near Dover, Cameron Jilkes is a young man from a broken home and a failed education, trained in the harshest theatre of war, driven to rage by loss and pain. And this time, ‘the eternal flame’ must go out – to hunt the crocodile himself.

The Foot Soldiers – Beware of Russians bearing gifts. Defectors are not always welcome. Is the information they bring worth the cost of protecting them for the rest of their lives? Is it even genuine? Might they be double agents? These are some of the questions facing MI6 when a Russian agent hands himself in to them in Denmark. As a team begins to assess his value, his former employers in the Kremlin develop a brutal plan to show that no defector will ever be safe. And they know where to find him. Which means there must be a mole in MI6. So it is that the cavaliers of Six find themselves being interrogated by nondescript Jonas Merrick of Five – the man called back from retirement and his beloved caravan, the man the young guns call the Eternal Flame because ‘he never goes out.’ But while he may be grey, Jonas is also ruthless. As he quietly works through the suspects in London, and violent mayhem breaks out in Denmark, Jonas plans not just to unmask a traitor, but to hit back at the Russians with deadly force.

In At the Kill – Liverpool: a suburban crime family grips a whole city with fear. And their ambition reaches further still. Galicia: an entire community waits on the windswept edge of Europe for the delivery of four tonnes of cocaine, brought across the ocean in an almost unbelievable craft. London: Jonas Merrick, grey and quiet, alone in a small office, seems an unlikely character to be tasked with bringing down an international drug network. But while Jonas’s colleagues regard him as scratchy, fastidious, old, he is also ruthless, cunning and brutally pragmatic. And he has a man on the inside: a would-be money-launderer on that wild Spanish coast. A man who has been undercover for so long, he has almost forgotten who he really is. And he is due to come home. Has to. For he will be given no mercy if he is caught. But Jonas needs him to stay.

The Best Revenge – On the Mongolian steppes a general in the People’s Liberation Army stakes his career, and his life, on a GPS-free missile guidance system that will change the balance of power on the battlefield. In Bath a young Chinese woman has secured the affections of a young brainiac working on that very problem. In Leamington Spa a deep cover operative has given himself away. And in London Jonas Merrick watches all, assessing, planning. A moment, perhaps, for him to strike a blow to China’s espionage network in the UK. One thing he does not see, however, is in Moscow. An order given: ‘bring me his head’.

A Duty of Care – Jonas Merrick – the legendary intelligence analyst for MI5 – has been banished to the Post Room of Thames House. There, he is expected to pass his remaining days before inevitable retirement. In a Russian gulag, an MI6 agent has developed an unlikely passion for a prisoner and has come up with an ingenious plan to free her. The key: a ruthless Albanian gang laundering the dirty money of the Russian elite. Merrick, the only agent with the experience to help, is brought back once again to intercept the Albanian courier until an exchange is organised by the Russians. But when it transpires that the courier is the heir of the criminal gang’s leader, the danger mounts, and Merrick once again finds himself in a situation spiralling towards a bloody confrontation.

The Irregular – The Metropolitan Police have an unsolvable problem: ‘Lachy’ Wilson is a ruthless and obscenely rich British drugs lord who has bought off dozens of their officers. Thanks to these informants, no one can lay a glove on Wilson and he is considered ‘untouchable’. Wilson is dreaming of one last, game-changing shipment of heroin into the UK. The Met turn to the outside for help. Jonas Merrick is an MI5 officer, unspectacular in his own right but spectacular in the success he’s had in dangerous counter terrorist operations. Can he thwart the drugs plot? Jonas has an ace in the hole: Kenny ‘Chopper’ Harris is an ex-paratrooper and soon to be ex-member of the Flying Squad, looking for a new home, new loyalties. Jonas recruits him to get close to Wilson’s Achilles’s heel: Julie Wilson is the heir apparent to the family drugs empire and Lachy’s go-between. Julie, like Chopper, is a lost soul – she dreams of life outside her father’s brutal orbit. Her fate is about to change at their first meeting. A bond is formed, a resolution is made: Chopper will get her free of her family, if she’ll betray her mission. Soon their desperate game of deception begins – a game which will inevitably end in a bloody denouement.

The three British masters of suspense, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and John le Carre, have been joined by a fourth – Gerald Seymour — The New York Times

Jonas Merrick has been among the best thriller creations of the past decade . . . [Seymour’s] insights into the world of crime and intelligence remain as compelling as ever, as do the staccato stabs of his prose’ — The Times

Gerald Seymour has created the most memorable hero of his long career — The Guardian

You don’t read Gerald Seymour, you commit to it totally. His stories have amazing detail, yet you still fly through them — Sun

There are strong echoes of George Smiley in Merrick’s mild and unprepossessing manner, which disguises a razor-sharp brain and considerable courage when necessary — Financial Times

Seymour’s finger is always on the current socio-political pulse — i News

[Charles] Cumming is perhaps matched only by Gerald Seymour now when it comes to recounting field operations — Sunday Times

[Seymour] has lost none of his talent for thrilling plots and creating credible and sympathetic characters, nor his journalist’s eye for modern espionage tradecraft and techniques — Shots Magazine

Supreme spy writer — Peterborough Telegraph

By: Gerald Seymour … Narrated by: Ben Allen … Length: 98 hours and 32 minutes