Traitor’s Kiss

By: Gerald Seymour

Narrated by: Christopher Kay

Officially, the Cold War is over, and the hand of friendship has been exchanged in public. In private, though, the intelligence war continues. A British trawler strays into Russian waters. On its return, the captain has a package for British Intelligence. For the next four years, a high-ranking Russian naval officer provides MI6 with priceless information. But suddenly he goes quiet. Clearly under suspicion, the decision is made to get him out. But his controllers in London know nothing about him.

©2003 Gerald Seymour (P)2004 W.F. Howes, Ltd.

Tedious and tiresome!

Follows the same formula as the one other book by Seymour which I have listened to. Interesting characters and beginning, but the story soon gets tedious and boring. It was also quickly obvious what would happen in the end, as the story line was so similar to the aforementioned other book. I'll try to return this one.

An absolutely outstanding book

This author rarely if ever disappoints
Complex and beautifully structured tale
Outstanding delivery by narrator
Worth taking a long haul flight just to listen to

Any comparison to le Carre is an insult

One-dimensional characters, poor plot, and one of the worst writing styles I’ve ever read. Every section begins with a “He” and then a torrent of insinuations, probably to keep the suspense, so the reader would have a basic acquaintance with the characters by the middle of the book. That won’t even work as a basis for a screenplay.

As for the narration: when narrating an espionage novel about Russia for a commercial production, one might expect some basic preparatory steps, such as checking with someone who actually speaks Russian how to pronounce the Russian words and names. Well, high expectations are bad for the digestion. The narrator had at least 3 (!) different versions of pronunciation for the full name of the FSB. The audiobook is 19 hours long, and every single time there was a phrase in Russian, even when the phrase had appeared dozens of times before, the narrator kept stumbling over it and sounded like he had pebbles in his mouth. I don’t expect the narrator to have a perfect Russian accent, but I do expect him to show some respect for the text (as bad as it may be), the author, and especially – the listeners, by having a BASIC CLUE of what he’s saying.