read by Tim Bentinck Raw and mesmerising, Gerald Seymour's The Dealer and the Dead feels much more like reportage than fiction. This is conflict at its most brutal and unsentimental.
The protagonist, British arms dealer Harvey Gillott, is targeted eighteen years after the fact for failing to deliver, as promised and paid for, weapons ordered by a Croatian village near Vukovar whose people had tried to make a last-ditch fight against the advancing Serbs. When the promised arms failed to be delivered, the village was overrun, the men of the village brutally murdered and the women violated. But when a body is unearthed in a field near the village, the name of the man who had betrayed them is finally revealed, and the villagers raise the money to hire a hit man for a simple revenge.
Spanning west and eastern Europe, and with a superb cast of characters, ranging from the London assassin to the smooth and psychopathic British Secret Intelligence Service officer, to the bereft, still-mourning Croatian villagers, The Dealer and the Dead is a breathtaking story which keeps you gripped right until the denouement.
Superbly narrated by Tim Bentinck, a gifted and familiar voice, this is an audiobook you won't regret acquiring.
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