I enjoyed this, no doubt about that.It had very many more strands than the blurb on the back would have led you to believe. Yes, one of the central characters is a disgraced ex-soldier seeking redemption by taking on drug dealers on his London sink estate. But there is, as always with Seymour, so much more. I presume this part of the novel was felt to be the most appealing in the eyes of the publisher to the browser at the supermarket, and received the attention of the cover artist and synopsis writer.Not that you would know it from what you read introducing the book, but the "Rat Run" actually refers to a criminally controlled people trafficking route, which is being deployed by Al Queda to move one of its principal co-ordinators to the UK to unleash a terrorist onslaught.Attached to these 2 main strands, which reach its inevitable confluence at the end, are an assortment of characters we follow, from a Hamburg crime baron, South East London drug importers, British Secret Service, Al Queda body guards, a German misanthrope on the barren islands off the North Sea coastline. As always the action alternates from these various perspectives, and builds to an inevitably tense conclusion.Not one of his more superlative efforts, however, I felt. Although the conclusion had the usual compromised resolutions, some I have read literally shake me, and this felt neither fully believable or satisfying. But still recommended.
