The Dogs Of War – Frederick Forsyth, 1974 ★

A Thriller That Never Thrills

You know things are going bad when a book is down to its last few pages and that big attack built up since chapter two still hasn’t come.

Will our mercenary protagonists drown before making landfall in the tiny African nation whose government they are trying to overthrow? Will they run afoul of Soviets or the conniving capitalists who put them up? Will they ditch their assignment and make off with the loot?

At risk of spoilers, no, no, and no. What happens instead is a white-knuckle journey to nowhere. After much bump and grind, Frederick Forsyth lamely drops us off with a shrug. Dogs Of War is more than a disappointment; it is a brush-off.

Cat Shannon is an Anglo-Irish soldier of fortune who needs action to keep him interested in life. To that end, he assembles four comrades-in-arms who likewise seek opportunities to sell their lethal services to the highest bidder. They do have consciences, but also appetites.

He lays it out for the young woman with whom he shares sex and philosophy:

“I don’t make wars. The world we live in makes wars, led and governed by men who pretend they are creatures of morality and integrity, whereas most of them are self-seeking bastards. They make the wars, for increased profits or increased power. I just fight the wars because it’s the way I like to live.”

Mercenaries in action today. Forsyth writes about the human toll of the work: "Each man felt some disgust, but none showed it. You can get used to anything eventually. In the Congo, Yemen, Katanga, Sudan."
Image from https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/3048989-wagner-and-others-mercenaries-of-totalitarian-regime.html

He certainly likes gearing up for battle, almost as much as Forsyth does writing about that. The Dogs Of War portends a lot of action and suspense, but boils down to a how-to manual for launching a third-world junta, complete with laundry lists of items to get, a rundown of who needs to be paid off, and not one but two different lengthy explanations of how a shell company can be set up and exploited.

A lot of bullets show up in Dogs Of War, only here the author cares more how they were acquired rather than spent.

This was Forsyth’s third novel; his prior books The Day Of The Jackal and The Odessa File were both major international bestsellers. The Dogs Of War was successful, too; adapted in 1980 for a film starring Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger. Forsyth’s novel is credited for helping popularize mercenary stories as a lucrative subgenre.

I love The Odessa File. I think The Day Of The Jackal is one of the greatest books of the 1970s, thrillers and otherwise. So I really mean it when I say I have no idea why The Dogs Of War is at all liked. It fails in nearly every department where Forsyth’s first two thrillers succeed.

The book does start well. We are in an unnamed African nation, a separatist republic about to be overrun by the harsh government from which it tried to break away. While the last planes leave with their cargos of refugees, five men find their way aboard as well: Cat Shannon and his gang, who fought and lost on the separatist side.

Forsyth writes: They said nothing, but the same thought was in each man’s mind. If they did not get out of the battered and crumbling enclave before the forces of the central government overran the last few square miles, they could not get out alive. Each man had a price on his head and intended to see that no man collected it.

The first scene from the 1980 movie The Dogs Of War recreates the novel's opening chapter, as Cat and his soldiers make a desperate dash for safety after a long fight on the losing side.
Image from https://www.framerated.co.uk/dogs-of-war-1980/

The scene is moody and effective, lingering just long enough to establish a mood of grim suspense. Forsyth was writing from experience; he had been a journalist covering the Biafra War in the late 1960s and saw the separatists of Nigeria’s southeastern coast lose to a bloody campaign of calculated bombing and starvation. Forsyth’s first book, The Biafra War, makes clear his sympathies for the separatists and their leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, remade here as “the general” who earns Shannon’s rare loyalty and respect.

My gut tells me Forsyth wanted to reward himself for two commercial successes as Jackal and Odessa by reworking elements of his Biafra experience into a thriller. It was even rumored in 1974 that Forsyth was trying to scare up a mercenary invasion, either in Nigeria or elsewhere. I can see how his research process for Dogs made people think that way. His research must have left no stone unturned.

Starting with chapter two, Forsyth crafts a novel of constant rote description. It begins with the secret discovery of platinum in the neglected (and fictional) African nation of Zangaro. This triggers the acid greed of British capitalist Sir James Manson, “a twentieth-century pirate and proud of it,” who realizes the Marxist (and insane) ruler of Zangaro won’t play ball with him. Manson hires Shannon to lead a coup.

This is a dandy set-up for a thriller; unfortunately Forsyth can’t or won’t get out of his own way by spelling out all the details. He explains everything at great length, beginning with the guy Manson hired to collect mineral deposits, the scientist on Manson’s staff charged with analyzing them, and Manson’s two wicked accomplices.

Much time is spent on Manson’s amoral behavior, aided and abetted by the British government (the same group that enabled Nigeria’s conquest of Biafra.) They do everything but rub their hands with glee.

“Knocking off a bank or an armored truck,” Manson explains, “is merely crude. Knocking off an entire republic has, I feel, a certain style.”

Michael Hoare, also known as "Mad Mike," made his name leading mercenaries in the Congo, and is name-checked as a former commander of Cat Shannon in Dogs Of War. Hoare went into retirement after leading a failed 1981 coup in Seychelles, dying in 2020 at age 100.
Image from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51352075 

When it gets to the mercenaries, I hoped the novel would pick up. Instead, it grinds down even more. The second and longest section, “The Hundred Days,” ambles into a day-by-day account of the preparations taken by Shannon and his men to affect the overthrow of Zangaro, from the ordering of Schmeisser machine pistols and rocket launchers to getting the boats. Many of these purchases get written up in moment-by-moment detail, despite just about everything going to plan.

Finding the right smuggling ship does become a minor issue, though easily resolved with some casuistry from Shannon:

“The license has not been forged, nor has anyone been bribed. It’s a perfectly legal shipment under the laws of Yugoslavia.”

“And the laws of the country it’s going to?” asked Waldenberg.

“The Toscana never enters the waters of the country where these arms are due to be used,” said Shannon.

The brilliance of Shannon’s planning, his ability to consider every contingency, becomes the book’s chief focus and main plot point.

The only real flies in the ointment are a rival mercenary with a grudge, who is treated with contempt and easily handled; and Sir James’ lovely daughter, who in a crazy coincidence goes on a date with Cat Shannon and soon finds herself in love with the contract killer.

Frederick Forsyth, circa 1974. In an introduction to a 1980 omnibus edition of Dogs, he explains: "An odor of cordite, corruption, and vultures here. But take your pick. The only other odor is of sanctimoniousness, hypocrisy, and convenient concern."
Image from https://www.thedailybeast.com/frederick-forsyth-i-slept-with-secret-police

Forsyth blatantly pushes Shannon’s James Bond profile, however improbably. Cat knows he is risking his contract, and he really doesn’t seem that desperate for love in any of its physical or emotional manifestations. But Forsyth does what he can to juice up the guy:

“Have you killed people,” she asked.

“Yes.”

“In battle?”

“Sometimes. Mostly.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. I never counted.”

Yes, he’s really that cool. We also learn he likes to eat well and travel a lot, so he only lacks the lovelorn secretary and the Walther PPK to complete his profile.

Forsyth did something like this before, in Day Of The Jackal, where his title protagonist lived a life of danger and mystery. Only because the Jackal was a shadow with no name, it was easy to admire the blankness of his portrait. Here, Shannon just seems incomplete. So is his crew, which includes a giant named “Tiny” and a Corsican who spends his downtime sharpening his favorite knife, because that’s how he kills.

When they finally get to Zangaro, we are down to the final two chapters, the first of which covers their inland journey and the second the final battle. It is big and bloody and an anticlimax given how it ends – a mortar round hits the ammunition dump in the enemy compound, killing everyone inside, which answered my question about how things would get wrapped up.

Answer: not well.

Equatorial Guinea, a tiny African nation said in Wikipedia to be the basis for fictional Zangaro in the novel. So backward is Zangaro that we are told a regular community entertainment is chopping up prisoners with a machete in the main square.
Image from https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-equatorial-guinea/

There is an aftermath in which we discover Shannon had something up his sleeve all along, harkening back to the novel’s beginning. This is no surprise if you know Forsyth, who likes surprise endings. But this one leaves way too much unanswered while pretending to be profound.

Writing thrillers is hard. Forsyth, who wrote them better than anyone, proves even with a deep background in a subject, getting across a suspenseful yarn is tough. Maybe his closeness to the subjects of Africa and mercenaries inhibited his best efforts, which always had an aspect of amused detachment largely missing here. His output has been uneven since; The Dogs Of War first served notice his greatness was not automatic.