The Devil’s Alternative – Frederick Forsyth, 1979 ★★★½

Doomsday on the North Atlantic

While the world keeps turning on the same axis, old problems persist. Back in 1979, subjects of popular dread included Russo-Ukrainian conflict, high seas piracy and a world on the brink of environmental catastrophe.

They even wrote best-selling thrillers about them.

After a five-year break, spy fiction master Frederick Forsyth was back with a twist. This time he was Tom Clancy, even though it was the 1970s and no one had heard of Clancy yet. The Devil’s Alternative is a Cold War cliffhanger set on a global scale with a variety of players conducting their own intrigues that feed into the overall plot.

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.

The Odessa File – Frederick Forsyth, 1972 ★★★★

The Humane One

Introducing his first three novels in a 1980 omnibus edition, Frederick Forsyth called The Odessa File “the humane one,” to distinguish it from the pure craft of his debut and a nastier tone in his third novel.

More than 40 years later, I don’t think anyone has summed up Odessa File nearly as well. It is a very humane sort of thriller, all the more involving and exciting for that.

Take one modern fellow trying to right a terrible wrong, throw in a terror plot that realistically threatens an entire nation, and incorporate a knowledge of politics, bureaucracy, and automotive mechanics, and you have another Forsyth winner, but with more than a bit of heart this time.

The Day Of The Jackal – Frederick Forsyth, 1971 ★★★★★

Making a Tutorial out of a Debut

Genre fiction is easy to take for granted; when you pick up a thriller or a spy novel, you expect a certain kind of experience. It’s not about becoming a better person or learning something; it’s about satisfaction.

But when a novel delivers consistently in just about every facet: suspense, structure, logic, atmosphere, climax; and does so in a way that elevates the form, you need to take a step back and ask: How did he do it?

At least that’s what I do every time I finish reading this masterpiece.

The Biafra Story – Frederick Forsyth, 1969 [Revised 2001] ★½

Who Mourns for Biafra?

They call them crimes against humanity, but do they count if not everyone admits they are crimes?

This was the problem facing a young British journalist who had what seemed to be a huge story in his hands, one where millions of helpless civilians were killed. But to many of his colleagues, and his own government, the deaths were unfortunate byproducts of settled policy.

Who mourns for Biafra? This becomes a question without an answer, and a cry which permeates each page of this angry, difficult book.

No Comebacks – Frederick Forsyth, 1982 ★★★★

Forsyth in a Different Vein

Why didn’t Frederick Forsyth become the biggest name in thriller writing?

This short-story collection, published toward the end of a great run of commercial and critical success, posits the idea that while forging an approach to his genre others like Ludlum and Clancy would pursue more diligently (if with less talent) what Fred really wanted was to be O. Henry.

People who picked up No Comebacks in the spring of 1982 expecting ten quick doses of the sort of top-notch thriller writing Forsyth had been producing since 1971’s The Day Of The Jackal (which continued up through 1984’s The Fourth Protocol, his last great novel) were disappointed. I know I was. A few stories offer suspense of this kind, but the overall body count is low and tension is of a more everyday variety.

The Negotiator – Frederick Forsyth, 1989 ★★

A Plot that Got Away

What happens when dark forces buried deep inside the leadership of two superpowers simultaneously plot to take control of the world’s major oil producers? The same thing that happens when an author pushes a yarn too convoluted and ambitious for his own good: total chaos.

Frederick Forsyth stood atop the world of airplane thrillers back when people still read books on planes. His prior novels topped bestseller lists and won over critics for their clever construction and daunting predicaments. What to do for an encore? How about a story involving the end of Glasnost, invasions of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the kidnapping of the President’s son?

Does this thing go to 11?

The Cobra – Frederick Forsyth, 2010 ★

A Master on Auto-Pilot

A problem with writing great novels is that people expect you to continue writing them.

But what if you run out of ideas? What if you can’t make yourself care about your characters? What if your approach to yarnspinning has gone from months of careful plotting to Gimme my money!

That’s where Frederick Forsyth has wound up in the late autumn of a distinguished career. Every few years he shakes off the cobwebs, sees what hot topic is on CNN, ruminates on how to make it a story, and then sets to work researching the subject. When it comes to research, Forsyth has been a longtime master and still delivers. It’s the rest of his career that’s gone south.

The Deceiver – Frederick Forsyth, 1991 ★★★★½

When a Man's Got a Job to Do

Sometimes it requires a shorter format for a craftsman’s quality to shine through. Not to take anything away from the novelist behind such classic long-form spy-fiction exercises as The Day Of The Jackal and The Fourth Protocol, but with Frederick Forsyth, there's something to be said for the merit of small packages, which is just what The Deceiver delivers.

Published in 1991, just as the Cold War was winding down, The Deceiver is designed as a look back at a series of cases late in the career of a top British spymaster. It’s oddly similar to another book published the same year.

In The Secret Pilgrim, John le Carré had his most famous spy character, George Smiley, deliver an informal dissertation regarding lessons learned to a group of English espionage students, which unspooled as a series of short stories. The same is true here, except in this case it's no casual gathering that's the setting, but a tense tribunal to determine whether to ashcan our protagonist as part of a best-forgotten past.

The Afghan – Frederick Forsyth, 2006 ★

A Thriller Out of Time

Frederick Forsyth has owned me for over 30 years, since The Day Of The Jackal held me hostage for a sleepless week in boarding school. Forsyth has put me ringside while World War III is averted, powerful bad guys are chastened with vigor, and the value of committed individualism is repeatedly, gloriously affirmed.

But the Cold War verities which spawned Forsyth’s career have given way. 9/11 showed you don’t need a Politburo to direct large-scale destruction upon the West. Simple good/evil binaries between freedom and Communism have been replaced by self-loathing democracies fed up with their own capitalist excess.

New technology, like drones and instantaneous eavesdropping, has made Forsyth’s dependency on isolated men of action seem almost quaint, not to mention sexist and possibly homophobic.