The Untouchable - 2001

Summary
Albert William Packer is the supreme baron of London crime. He rules his manor with a cruel, ruthless fist. To those around him, on whatever side of the law, he is the Untouchable.
Another case against him in tatters, Packer walks free from the Old Bailey. Yet again he and his solicitor have outsmarted the Customs & Excise unit tasked to take him down. Now bored with his own success, Packer sets out to expand his empire abroad. His core business is heroin, bought from the Turks in North London's Green Lanes. Where better to cut out the middleman than at the historic smuggling crossroads of Europe, the Balkans?

Now men and women are drafted into Custom House dedicated to convicting Packer. Only one member of the old team survives: the most junior, Joey Cann, retained soley for his obsessional knowledge of the man who calls himself 'Mister'. When Packer leaves for Sarajevo, it is inevitable that Cann be sent after him for 'intrusive surveillance'. The brief: to bring back the evidence that will finally nail Packer to the wall.

In London, it would have been no contest. But here on the war-torn, dismal streets of a city where justice is enforced by gangster warlords, Packer is far from home and from what he knows. Here, who will be the Untouchable? Who will walk away?

Extract
The entry into the terraced house was fast and brutal.
The man, Riley, was taken by men wearing balaclavas from the kitchen table where he was eating with his partner and their children and dragged out through the sagging door.
He was driven in the back of a van, chicken trussed. He wet himself. A length of sticky tape blindfolded him.
He was taken from the van, his feet scraping the ground helplessly, and into a great echoing vault that he though was a disused warehouse.
There seemed to him to be several men in the room.
A chair scraped, as if the man sitting on it leaned forward.
A whispered voice, and his hope died: 'People tell me, Georgie, that you have been talking about me...'

Reviews
"The finest thriller writer in the world today" THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"A clever, informed and worldly cynical story about arrogance, obsession and tragedy." THE TIMES

"A genuinely exciting epic...the novel has a truly memorable final chapter...entertaining." THE INDEPENDENT

Webmaster Review
Up there with the best Seymour books. He brilliantly weaves a parallel thread running alongside the excellent main story (as in Holding the Zero) which again works extremely well. It features great, well rounded, characters who all have their good and bad features. Mr Seymour again doesn't disappoint the reader by once more finishing with the story with a sledgehammer of an ending.