The Unknown Soldier -- Gerald Seymour: A Book Review

The Unknown Soldier
Gerald Seymour
The Overlook Press, 2004

I'm not even going to beat around the bush, give a synopsis, or laud this book before I say this:  This is the best thriller I have read since Day of the Jackal.  And that is saying something.  This is one powerful read. 

And it comes from a master storyteller of the genre, from what I gather, since I have never read any of his books before this (seventeen if the list inside the novel is accurate).  Gerald Seymour is critically acclaimed and should be -- The Unknown Soldier is a masterful work of intrigue. 

Much like Day of the Jackal, the lead character is the man intent on doing harm.  In this case, an al Qaeda operative who has successfully lied to American authorities for two years and has finally been released from Guantanamo.  When the Americans realize their mistake, this "taxi driver" has disappeared into the mountains of Afghanistan.

He is special, this "taxi driver."  He is chosen.  He begins a journey that will take him over Afghan mountains to the Sea of Oman, then to Saudi Arabia, where he will tempt the nothingness of sand that is the Empty Quarter.  All to prove his worthiness for the mission given him.  And anyone and everyone who witnesses his path dies.

Extremely well written, The Unknown Soldier has many supporting characters, like the doctor who is an intelligence informant, who is disgusted with his life and himself, but is afraid to tell his handler that he's had enough.  His handler, a bully, is just trying to find acceptance in the intelligence hierarchy.  An American CIA operative, who befriends the handler, but only so far as the handler gives him information in a one-sided and frustrating, for the handler, relationship.  The two techs that operate the secretive aerial surveillance drone that scour the Middle East for intelligence.  The low echelon military intelligence officer who catches the mistake of letting the "taxi driver" go and begins searching for him.  And a host of Middle Eastern characters that facilitate the chosen one's (the "taxi driver") path to his destiny, which is a vaguely shared terrorist plan that will see a nuclear bomb detonated in a major Western city. 

The Unknown Soldier even has an ending worthy of the best Hitchcock.  Yes, it is that good.  There aren't enough adjectives in my vocabulary to describe the achievement of this book.  Not only is it a fantastic read, but it is a horrific cautionary tale about the "cracks" in our defenses, the ineptitude, difficult work, and the dumb luck of intelligence gathering, and the lengths people will go to be accepted.