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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780451209320
ISBN number: 045120932X
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 512
Printing Date: January 06, 2004
Publishing house: Signet
Release Date: January 06, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 17069
Studio: Signet
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
The New York Times Bestseller by the author of The Confessor.
When the Good Saturday peace accords are shattered by three savage acts of terrorism, Northern Ireland is blown back into the depths of conflict. And after his father-in-law is nominated to become the new American ambassador to London, retired CIA agent Michael Osbourne is drawn back into the game. He soon discovers that his father-in-law is marked for execution. And that he himself is once again in the crosshairs of a killer known as October, one of the most merciless assassins the world has ever known...
Amazon.com:
The Good Saturday agreement that promised to bring peace to the embattled Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland is jeopardized by a new paramiltary group bent on destroying the truce. Michael Osbourne, the hero of Silva's previous thriller, The Mark of the Assassin, is rerecruited by the CIA when Douglas Cannon--his father-in-law, a former senator, and the new ambassador to the Court of St. James--is targeted for death by the Ulster Freedom Brigade. Osbourne has long since given up on the spying game and is reluctant to be drawn back into it again. Then he discovers that the Brigade has shopped the contract on Senator Cannon to October, the assassin who narrowly missed killing Osbourne a few years ago but succeeded in murdering the woman he once loved. It's a good setup for a political thriller, with nonstop action that moves from Belfast to Armagh, New York to Washington, London to Mykonos. What really notches up the suspense is the double-dealing in the corridors of power, particularly the CIA and a secret organization called the Society--a nasty assemblage of politicos, spymasters, arms merchants, and killers bent on destabilizing nascent peacemaking efforts all over the globe. Down but not out at the conclusion of Silva's latest, the Society and Osbourne will likely be back for a return engagement the subsequent time warring factions endeavor to beat their swords. In fact, as the director of the Society says in the last chapter, 'The Kosovo Liberation Front would like our help: Gentlemen, we're back in business.' --Jane Adams
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Daniel Silva keeps me reading!! The situation in Northern Ireland has always bothered me greatly and sadly. Perhaps the scariest part of this book is knowing that the 'situation' in N. I. never really has changed!
The Marching Season is a fast paced book, and you want to keep reading til you finish!! You just have to KNOW.......Is the Director of the CIA really rotten?? And how in the world could a person from MI6 be so very crooked??? Is Delaroche going to finally annilate Michael Osborne???
KEEP READING!!
Rated by buyers 
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...is simply awful. That is awful, not awesome. God, what a stinker.
Technical details are shallow and/or missing, and the story is so laughable implausable, that for me being a Silva fan caused me to put this sad effort down and then return to it a half dozen times.
It is where silly meets dumb and provide for the least interesting characters possible. I found that I was migrating towards minor characters like real estate agents and canines rather than the main and secondary protagonists.
I am very glad that Mr.Silva's writing has improved in his later works. This one was, well,...painful.Worse. It was boring.
Rated by buyers -
It takes a great writer to entice me to buy all of their books. I bought all of Silva's books after completing "Mark of the Assassin."
He weaves a lot of fact, including history, into his tales. Thus making them more credible and worthwhile from a learning perspective.
I find the "Society" to be quite fascinating as I am intrigued by factual conspiracies. Though Silva's "Society" is fictional, there is something in the real world with several similarities. I would sure like to know Silva's thoughts on what is fact and what is fiction.
I'm surprised that some movies have not been produced based on these fine yarns.
Sorry I don't always give my perspective on what the story was. Almost everyone else does that, as well as all book jackets. Sometimes it seems repetitive to see dozens of readers recapitulate the story (this one deals with the centuries old problem of terrorism in Ireland). Now I know why England has so many bloody security cameras.
Rated by buyers -
Against the backdrop of the Good Saturday Accords of 1998, this 1999 thriller explores several groups which have reason to want the peace process to fail so that they can accomplish their own agendas. Partisans of the Republic and partisans of the Union have come to an agreement regarding peace and power-sharing, but the new Ulster Freedom Brigade believes that all sides have sold out, and they are willing to murder Catholics and Protestants alike as they continue the sectarian violence. At the same time an international group, the secret Society for International Development and Cooperation, consisting of powerful business and security officials from around the world, decides to use the uncertainties in Ulster to further their own business interests.
Michael Osbourne, formerly with the CIA, is lured out of retirement to promote the peace process and to guard his father-in-law, Douglas Cannon, who has just been appointed US ambassador to the Court of St. James. Osbourne has experienced personal danger, having escaped an assassination endeavor the previous year, and he knows his way around Ireland. The Society, however, contacts the man who previously tried to kill him, a Russian known only as October, and hires him to stop Osbourne and the Ambassador and end the peace process.
Though the mystery associated with Ulster is exciting and filled with authentic detail, including some of the real characters associated with the Accords, the novel wanders into other, unrelated areas. The Society for International Development and Cooperation includes powerful and amoral renegades in high positions in the US, Israel, the UK, and other countries, and as the action shifts to Egypt, France, Greece, and other countries, the subplots shift the focus away from Ireland and into an international netherworld.
The staccato sentence structure, while effective for conveying action, gets wearisome here because there is so much action, not all of it related to Ireland, and Silva's descriptive abilities, so obvious in some of his other novels, are subordinated here to the action. One gets some insight into October and how he became the assassin he is, but Osbourne, while clever, remains somewhat indistinct from other thriller "heroes." This Silva novel lacks the unity and intense characterization one associates with the Gabriel Allon series, and Ari Shamron, Allon's mentor, is a sinister SIDC character here. Still, the novel is fun to read, a fast-paced thriller which does give some insights into the complexities of Ulster and the difficulties of the peace process. n Mary Whipple
Rated by buyers -
For some reason, I inadvertently read books in a series out of sequence and such is the case here. I read "The Marching Season" without having read the very first book, "Mark of the Assassin." This was a very good book, but I probably won't read its prequel because I now know how things are resolved. In any case, I heartily recommend this novel if you've read the very first book. It zips along nicely, is well-crafted, like most Silva novels, and has a lot of suspense and excitement. It gives a pretty clear view of various aspects of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. One downer for me is the inclusion in the plot of a malicious global organization which exists only to foment turmoil. I think that's a device that insults the reader. Also, the ending gets crazy and silly. Silva cooks up such a good plot that he doesn't know how to resolve things, so he just makes a mad dash for the exit. In any case, I'm a big Silva fan and I enjoyed this book. If only I had read the other book first.....
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