Frederick Forsyth - Avenger

 Ok - sometimes you just need some pointless action as an antidote to heavy tomes and who better to provide it than Frederick Forsyth.

Avenger is a political thriller novel by Frederick Forsyth published in September 2003. This was adapted for television in the 2006 film Avenger starring Sam Elliott. The blurb reads as follows

Attorney Calvin Dexter hangs his shingle in a quiet New Jersey town, has a reasonably successful practice, and takes the hills strong while triathalon training. But Dexter is no ordinary man.

The summer before he goes to college, Ricky Colenso travels to Bosnia to volunteer as an aid worker. A few weeks later, he disappears and is never heard from again. A family grieves and is offered little hope--in the fog of that horrible time and place, the killer, too, has vanished.

Or so it would seem. For in a world that has forgotten right and wrong, there are few like Cal Dexter who can settle the score. And so, years later, a worldwide chase is on and Dexter begins to draw a net around the killer. But this time CIA agent Paul Devereux must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos.

A heart-stopping novel of murder and mystery, double-cross and triple-cross, old loyalties and new hatreds, Avenger has all of Frederick Forsyth's page-turning trademarks.

I have read most of Forsyth's books and have most of the following on the bookshelves somewhere or other

• The Cobra
• The Day of the Jackal
• The Deceiver
• The Devil's Alternative
• The Dogs of War 
• The Fist of God
• The Fourth Protocol
• Icon 
• The Negotiator
• The Odessa File
• The Shepherd

Frederick Forsyth must be the best thriller writer of the past 20-30 years. His celebrated work, The Day of The Jackal, is one of the best thriller novels to have been ever written. I have read lots by the likes of Ludlum, Le Carre and the rest but none comes close to Forsyth for the detailed plots, the fantastic research, the jumping back and forth in time, the gradual buildup of tension as the book progresses.

This is up with the best of them. Well worth a read - you won't be able to put it down once you get into it. And there is a twist right at the end!

Tim

3 March 2016