The Outsiders

MI5’s Winnie Monks, the protagonist of this joyless, repetitive thriller from Seymour (The Dealer and the Dead), reassembles her scattered Graveyard Team of organized crime investigators to avenge the murder of young agent Damian Fenby five years earlier in Budapest. An unexpected break finally identifies the killer as veteran Russian crime boss Petar Alexander Borsonov, and when Monks learns he is going to visit the home of fellow Russian Pavel Ivanov on Spain’s Costa del Sol, she sets in motion a plan to take Borsonov down. Complications abound: Monk’s advance team finds house-sitting young Brits in the supposedly empty house next door that other team members intended to use, an aging British con man gets involved with Ivanov, and Monk’s chosen sniper suffers from debilitating PTSD. Seymour takes his time developing the major players with small, seemingly inconsequential incidents morphing into major developments. In the end, fickle fate holds the winning cards. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (Feb.)