The Unknown Soldier by Gerald Seymour

First published in Great Britain in 2004; published by Overlook Trade Paperback on March 28, 2006

Gerald Seymour is one of my favorite writers of espionage fiction. Toiling in the shadow of John Le Carré, Seymour's work is largely overlooked by the American audience. Seymour doesn't have quite the stylistic grace of Le Carré, but he is -- at his best -- nearly Le Carré's equal as a storyteller. While The Unknown Soldier isn't Seymour's best work (Home Run remains my favorite), the novel features some of Seymour's most intriguing characters.

Seymour structures the plot as a series of interlocking storylines, each following a set of characters that, for most of the novel, lack any connection to the others. The key character, known both as Caleb and Abu Khaleb, has managed to talk his way out of Guantanamo by adopting the identity of an innocent cab driver. For reasons that don't become apparent until the final chapters, Caleb is making his way across the Earth's largest sand desert, the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula. Sparsely populated by camels and itinerant Bedouin tribesmen, the Empty Quarter serves as a hiding place for Caleb's al Qaeda masters. A good part of the novel describes the arduous journey Caleb makes across the forbidding terrain and the conflicts that arise between the untrusting terrorists who accompany him.

Other characters include Beth Jenkins, a lonely geologist working at the Shaybah oil extraction plant; Samuel "Bart" Bartholomew, a disgraced physician who works in Riyadh, where his income depends upon the information about his patients that he provides to British intelligence officer Eddie Wroughton; Juan Gonsalves, Wroughton's American counterpart; Jed Dietrich, a Guantanamo interrogator working for the DIA;, and Marty and Lizzy-Jo, the pilot and sensor operator of a Predator that prowls the windy skies above the Empty Quarter. Each character comes fully alive. Their individual stories are more interesting than the slowly unfolding explanation for Caleb's trek across the desert.

As is characteristic of Seymour's novels, The Unknown Soldier is solidly plotted. Dramatic tension builds as the characters, carrying out their own missions and agendas, end up working at cross-purposes. Thriller fans looking for fast action, gunplay, and heroes who save the world from evil fanatics might be bored by The Unknown Soldier, as well as Seymour's other novels. This is a novel of intrigue and intellect rather than daring exploits.

Readers who want a clear, unambiguous ending in which the good guys defeat the bad guys should probably never read a Seymour novel, particularly not this one. I didn't mind the unresolved nature of the story's conclusion but I don't think it had quite the punch that Seymour intended. Perhaps there have been so many novels about terrorism in recent years that I've become jaded, but the open-ended, supposedly ominous ending didn't resonate with me. For that reason, I thought The Unknown Soldier was worth reading for its characters, less so for its story.

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