I remember Gerald Seymour as a news reader and television reporter ... but he hasn't done that for years! He took to writing novels set in Ulster, if I remember rightly, when he was a reporter and hasn't looked back since.

Enough of that, we cares what I remember?

Archangel is a warning to anyone who thinks it might be OK to carry something on an aeroplane on behalf of someone else. Michael Holly, our hero, does that and falls foul of having been caught.

Secondly, the book is a story largely set in a Russian prison for dissidents; and it's told warts and all.

Holly is British born of Russian parents and he speaks Russian as well as English. He is lured into acting as a courier for the British government since he is a frequent traveller to the old country. He gets caught and is thrown in gaol. However, given his status as a Brit, he is treated well by Russian standards. He is then in line for a prisoner exchange but, Sod's Law, the prisoner with whom he is to be exchanged decides it's time to die! So die he does.

Holly is now out on a limb and despite the attempts by the British government, half hearted it has to be said, to free him, he stays firmly put.

The Russian gloves come off and Holly is transferred to a more usual gaol for dissidents and any privileges he might otherwise have enjoyed are removed. Cockroach soup is his as well as everyone else's!

Holly sets out his stall on arrival by standing up to the local toughs: the barons of the dormitory where they sleep and spend any free time. He tells them he's not afraid and will not kow tow: it earns him respect and he doesn't have to brawl his way to the top either, he just turns the rules on their heads!

Holly isn't presented as a bitter character but he is presented as a character: a foreigner by birth, so he's different. A different approach to life and to authority, so he's different again. He will not fit in.

Then he starts toying with the authorities: he builds an incendiary device that burns down the admin offices ... they've no idea who did it or how. He puts something noxious into the water supply and someone dies. That causes real ructions and they call in the heavy brigade but they still don't know who did it!

Holly escapes and takes another prisoner with him: a man whose wife is dying of cancer but who isn't a full shilling and who clumsily gives the game away once they'd escaped and were reasonably safely hiding in a forest.

It's downhill all the way after that. Holly is instrumental in turning their relatively quiet lives upside down when a full scale prisoner take over causes even more mayhem in the gaol. There is a quiet phase, the friendly phase, there are deaths and more mayhem. But Holly's card is marked and someone wants him to die: he leads a charmed life to some extent, though ... did he die or was he saved and returned to Blighty?

Read the book and find out! Definitely worthy of a read and Seymour's style is not too bad except that he does get a bit arty/surreal from time to time with his style of asking rhetorical questions at the rate of three to the page. let me stress, from time to time.

In a sense it's odd but there aren't any real characters or personalities in this book. Holly, yes, but the governor, not really; the governor's sidekick not really, the toughs, a bit ... Holly dominates the book as he dominated the gaol.

Duncan Williamson
3 June 2005