Forsyth, Frederick 1938-

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Forsyth, Frederick 1938-

PERSONAL:

Born 1938, in Ashford, Kent, England; son of a furrier, shopkeeper, and rubber tree planter; married Carole Cunningham (a model), September, 1973 (marriage ended); married Sandy Molloy, 1994; children: (first marriage) Frederick Stuart, Shane Richard. Education: Attended University of Granada, Spain. Hobbies and other interests: Sea fishing, snooker.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Hertfordshire, England.

CAREER:

Author. Eastern Daily Press, Norwich, England, and King's Lynn, Norfolk, reporter, 1958-61; Reuters News Agency, reporter in London, England, and Paris, France, 1961-63, bureau chief in East Berlin, East Germany, 1963-64; British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), London, reporter, 1965-66, assistant diplomatic correspondent, 1967-68; freelance journalist in Nigeria, 1968-69. Chair of the Society of Stars (a charity raising money for children with cerebral palsy). Military service: Royal Air Force, 1956-58; pilot.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Edgar Allan Poe Award, Mystery Writers of America, 1971, for The Day of the Jackal.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Day of the Jackal, Viking (New York, NY), 1971.

The Odessa File, Viking (New York, NY), 1972.

The Dogs of War, Viking (New York, NY), 1974.

The Shepherd, Hutchinson (London, England), 1975, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

The Novels of Frederick Forsyth (contains The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, and The Dogs of War), Hutchinson (London, England), 1978, published as Forsyth's Three, Viking (New York, NY), 1980, published as Three Complete Novels, Avenel Books (New York, NY), 1980.

The Devil's Alternative, Hutchinson (London, England), 1979, Viking (New York, NY), 1980.

The Four Novels (contains The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, and The Devil's Alternative), Hutchinson (London, England), 1982.

The Fourth Protocol, Viking (New York, NY), 1984.

The Negotiator, Bantam (New York, NY), 1989.

The Deceiver, Bantam (New York, NY), 1991.

The Shepherd, Bantam (New York, NY), 1992.

The Fist of God, Bantam (New York, NY), 1994.

Icon, Bantam (New York, NY), 1996.

The Phantom of Manhattan, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Avenger, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.

The Afghan, Penguin (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

The Biafra Story (nonfiction), Penguin (London, England), 1969, revised edition published as The Making of an African Legend: The Biafra Story, 1977, published as The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend, Pen & Sword Military (Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England), 2007.

Emeka (biography), Spectrum Books (Ibadan, Nigeria), 1982, 2nd edition, 1993.

No Comebacks: Collected Short Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

(And executive producer) The Fourth Protocol (screenplay; based on his novel of the same title), Lorimar, 1987.

Chacal, French and European Publications, 1990.

(Editor) Great Flying Stories, Norton (New York, NY), 1991.

I Remember: Reflections on Fishing in Childhood, Summersdale (London, England), 1995.

The Veteran and Other Stories, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2001.

Also author of The Soldiers, a documentary for BBC. Contributor to Visitor's Book: Short Stories of Their New Homeland by Famous Authors Now Living in Ireland, Arrow Books, 1982. Author of story for the television movies Cry of the Innocent, 1980, and Code Name: Wolverine, 1996; author of story and executive producer for television movies, including Just Another Secret, 1989, The Price of the Bride, 1990, A Little Piece of Sunshine, 1990, Death Has a Bad Reputation, 1990, Pride and Extreme Prejudice, 1990, and A Casualty of War, 1990. Contributor of articles to newspapers and magazines, including Playboy.

ADAPTATIONS:

The Day of the Jackal was filmed by Universal, 1973; The Odessa File was filmed by Columbia, 1974; The Dogs of War was filmed by United Artists, 1981; the Mobil Showcase Network filmed two of Forsyth's short stories ("A Careful Man" and "Privilege") under the title Two by Forsyth, 1984; The Fourth Protocol was filmed by Lorimar, 1987; Icon was filmed by Hallmark Entertainment, 2005; Avenger was filmed by Appledown Films Inc., 2006. "A Careful Man" was also videotaped and broadcast on Irish television.

SIDELIGHTS:

British writer Frederick Forsyth "helped define the international conspiracy thriller," according to Booklist's Connie Fletcher. Further, he established, as a critic for Publishers Weekly noted, the "traditional formula of thrillers that educate as well as entertain." Realism is the key word behind Forsyth's novels, which originated a new genre, the "documentary thriller." Forsyth found sudden fame with the publication of his smash best seller The Day of the Jackal, a book that combines the suspense of an espionage novel with the detailed realism of the documentary novel, first made popular by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The detail in Forsyth's novels depends not only on the months of research he spends on each book, but also on his own varied personal experiences, which lend even greater authenticity to his writing. As Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Andrew F. Macdonald explained: "The sense of immediacy, of an insider's view of world affairs, of all-too-human world figures," as well as quick-paced plots, are the keys to the author's popularity.

Critics, however, have sometimes faulted the novelist for shallow characterization and a simplistic writing style. Forsyth does not deny his emphasis on plotting over other considerations. In a Los Angeles Times interview, he remarked: "My books are eighty percent plot and structure. The remaining twenty percent is for characters and descriptions. I try to keep emotions out.

Occasionally a personal opinion will appear in the mouth of one of my characters, but only occasionally. The plot's the thing. This is how it works best for me." These plots find their resolution in Forsyth's painstaking attention to detail. "Forsyth's forte, with the added bonus of precise technical description worthy of a science writer," Macdonald explained, is "how things work, ranging from the construction of a special rifle (The Day of the Jackal) and improvised car bombs (The Odessa File), to gunrunning (The Dogs of War) and the innards of oil tankers (The Devil's Alternative), to the assembly of miniature nuclear bombs (The Fourth Protocol)."

For Forsyth the road to becoming a best-selling novelist was a long, circuitous route filled with adventurous detours that would later work their way into his writing. Early in his life, Forsyth became interested in becoming a foreign correspondent when his father introduced him to the world news as reported in the London Daily Express. In a London Times interview with John Mortimer, Forsyth related how his father "would get out the atlas and show me where the trouble spots were. And, of course, father had been to the Orient, he told me about tiger shoots and the headhunters in Borneo." Impatient to experience life for himself, Forsyth left school at the age of seventeen and went to Spain, where he briefly attended the University of Granada while toying with the idea of becoming a matador. However, having previously trained as a Tiger Moth biplane pilot, Forsyth decided to join the Royal Air Force in 1956. He learned to fly a Vampire jet airplane, and—at the age of nineteen—was the youngest man in England at the time to earn his wings.

But Forsyth still dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent, and toward that end he left the service to join the staff of the Eastern Daily Press. His talent for languages (Forsyth is fluent in French, German, Spanish, and Russian) later landed him his dream job as a correspondent for the Reuters News Agency and then for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It was during an assignment for the BBC that Forsyth's career took a sudden turn. Assigned to cover an uprising in the Nigerian region of Biafra, Forsyth began his mission believing he was going to meet an upstart rebellious colonel who was misleading his followers. He soon realized, though, that this leader, Colonel Ojukwu, was actually an intelligent man committed to saving his people from an English-supported government whose corrupt leaders were allowing millions to die of starvation in order to obtain their oil-rich lands. When Forsyth reported his findings, he was accused of being unprofessional, and his superiors reassigned him to covering politics at home. Outraged, Forsyth resigned, and he told Henry Allen in a Washington Post article that this experience destroyed his belief "that the people who ran the world were men of good will." This disillusionment is reflected in his writing. Forsyth revealed to Mortimer that he prefers "to write about immoral people doing immoral things. I want to show that the establishment's as immoral as the criminals."

Going back to Africa, Forsyth did freelance reporting in Biafra and wrote an account of the war, The Biafra Story, which Spectator critic Auberon Waugh asserted "is by far the most complete account, from the Biafran side [of the conflict], that I have yet read." In 1970, when the rebels were finally defeated and Ojukwu went into exile, Forsyth returned to England to find that his position on the war had effectively eliminated any chances he had of resuming a reporting career. He decided, however, that he could still put his journalism experience to use by writing fiction. Recalling his days in Paris during the early 1960s, when rumors were spreading that the Secret Organization Army had hired an assassin to shoot President Charles de Gaulle, Forsyth sat down and in just over a month wrote The Day of the Jackal based on this premise.

Forsyth had problems selling the manuscript at first because publishers could not understand how there could be any suspense in a plot about a presidential assassination that had obviously never come to pass. As the author explained to Allen, however, "The point was not whodunit, but how, and how close would he get?" The fascinating part of The Day of the Jackal lies in Forsyth's portrayal of the amoral, ultra-professional killer known only by his code name, "Jackal," and detective Claude Lebel's efforts to stop him. Despite what New York Times Book Review critic Stanley Elkin called Forsyth's "graceless prose style," and characterization that, according to J.R. Frakes in a Book World review, uses "every stereotype in the filing system," the author's portrayal of his nemesis weaving through a nonstop narrative has garnered acclaim from many critics and millions of readers. By boldly switching his emphasis from the side of the law to the side of the assassin, Forsyth adds a unique twist that gives his novel its appeal. "So plausible has Mr. Forsyth made his implausible villain … and so exciting does he lead him on his murderous mission against impossible odds," said Elkin, "that even saintly readers will be hard put not to cheer this particular villain along his devious way." The author, however, noted that he considered the positive response to his villain a distinctly American response. "There is this American trait of admiring efficiency," he explained to a Washington Post interviewer, "and the Jackal is efficient in his job."

"The Day of the Jackal established a highly successful formula," wrote Macdonald, "one repeated by Forsyth and a host of other writers." Using a tight, journalistic style, Forsyth creates an illusion of reality in his writing by intermixing real-life people and historical events with his fictional characters and plots; "the ultimate effect is less that of fiction than of a fictional projection into the lives of the real makers of history," Macdonald attested. The author also fills his pages with factual information about everything from how to assemble a small nuclear device to shipping schedules and restaurant menus. But the main theme behind the author's novels is the power of the individual to make a difference in the world, and even change the course of history. Macdonald described the Forsyth protagonist as "a maverick who succeeds by cutting through standard procedure and who as a result often has difficulty in fitting in, [yet he] lives up to his own high professional standards. Forsyth suggests that it is the lone professionals, whether opposed to the organization or part of it, who truly create history, but a history represented only palely on the front pages of newspapers."

Since Forsyth had a three-book contract with Viking, he quickly researched and wrote his next two novels, The Odessa File, about a German reporter's hunt for a Nazi war criminal, and The Dogs of War, which concerns a mercenary who orchestrates a military coup in West Africa. Forsyth drew on his experience as a reporter in East Berlin for The Odessa File, as well as interviewing experts such as Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, to give the novel authenticity. Background to The Dogs of War also came from the author's personal experiences—in this case, his time spent in Biafra. When it comes to details about criminal doings, however, Forsyth goes right to the source. In a Toronto Globe and Mail interview with Rick Groen, Forsyth said, "There are only two kinds of people who really know the ins and outs of illegal activities: those who practice them and those who seek to prevent them from being practiced. So you talk to cops or criminals. Not academics or criminologists or any of those sorts." This tactic has gotten Forsyth into some dangerous situations. In a Chicago Tribune interview the author regaled Michael Kilian with one instance when he was researching The Dogs of War. Trying to learn more about gun trafficking in the black market, Forsyth posed as a South African interested in buying arms. The ploy worked until one day when the men he was dealing with noticed a copy of The Day of the Jackal in a bookstore window. It was "probably the nearest I got to being put in a box," said the author.

The Dogs of War became a highly controversial book when a London Times writer accused Forsyth of paying two hundred thousand dollars to mercenaries attempting a coup against the president of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Marcias Nguema. At first, the novelist denied any involvement. Later, however, David Butler and Anthony Collins reported in Newsweek that Forsyth admitted to having "organized a coup attempt for research purposes, but that he had never intended to go through with it." The controversy did not hurt book sales, though, and The Dogs of War became Forsyth's third best seller in a row.

After The Dogs of War, Forsyth did not attempt another thriller for several years. He credits exhaustion to this lengthy hiatus. "Those first three novels had involved a lot of research, a lot of traveling, a half-million words of writing, a lot of promotion," the novelist told New York Times Book Review contributor Tony Chiu. "I was fed up with the razzmatazz. I said I would write no more." To avoid heavy English taxes, Forsyth moved to Ireland, where tax laws are lenient on writers. One explanation as to why he returned to writing has been offered by New York Times Book Review critic Peter Maas, who recorded that when a tax man came to Forsyth's door one day and explained that only actively writing authors were eligible for tax breaks, Forsyth quickly told him that he was working on a novel at that moment. "I hasten to say," Maas wrote, "that all this may be apocryphal, but in the interests of providing us a greater truth, I like to think it happened. It's a wonderful thought, the idea of a tax person forcing a writer into more millions."

Forsyth made his comeback with The Devil's Alternative, an intricately plotted, ambitious novel about an American president who must choose between giving in to the demands of a group of terrorists and possibly causing a nuclear war in the process, or refusing their demands and allowing them to release the biggest oil spill in history from the tanker they have hijacked. "The vision is somewhat darker than in Forsyth's earlier works, in which a moral choice was possible," noted Macdonald. "Here … somebody must get hurt, no matter which alternative is chosen." The usual complaints against Forsyth's writing have been trained against The Devil's Alternative. Peter Gorner, for one, argued in the Chicago Tribune Book World that "his characters are paper-thin, the pages are studded with cliches, and the plot is greased by coincidence." But Gorner added that "things move along so briskly you haven't much time to notice." Los Angeles Times critic Robert Kirsch similarly noted that "Forsyth's banal writing, his endless thesaurus of cliches, his Hollywood characters do not interfere with page turning." Nevertheless, New York Times Book Review contributor Irma Pascal Heldman expressed admiration for Forsyth's ability to accurately predict some of the political crises that came to pass not long after the book was published. She also praised the "double-whammy ending that will take even the most wary reader by surprise. The Devil's Alternative is a many-layered thriller."

As with The Devil's Alternative, Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol and The Negotiator offer intrigue on a superpower scale. The Fourth Protocol is the story of a Soviet plot to detonate a small atomic device in a U.S. airbase in England. The explosion is meant to be seen as an American error and help put the leftist, anti-nuclear Labour Party into power. Reviews on the novel were mixed. Time magazine reviewer John Skow faulted the author for being too didactic: "[Forsyth's] first intention is not to write an entertainment but to preach a political sermon. Its burden is that leftists and peaceniks really are fools whose habitual prating endangers civilization." Michiko Kakutani, writing in the New York Times, also felt that, compared to Forsyth's other novels, The Fourth Protocol "becomes predictable, and so lacking in suspense." But other critics, including Washington Post Book World reviewer Roderick MacLeish, maintained a contrary view. MacLeish asserted that it is Forsyth's "best book so far" because the author's characters are so much better developed. "Four books and a few million pounds after Jackal Frederick Forsyth has become a well-rounded novelist."

Of The Negotiator, Forsyth's tale of the kidnapping of an American president's son, Globe and Mail critic Margaret Cannon declared that "while nowhere nearly as good as The Day of the Jackal or The Odessa File, it's [Forsyth's] best work in recent years." Harry Anderson, writing in Newsweek, also called the novel "a comparative rarity; a completely satisfying thriller." Critics such as Washington Post reviewer John Katzenbach have resurrected the old complaints that Forsyth "relies on shallow characters and stilted dialogue," and that while "the dimensions of his knowledge are impressive, rarely does the information imparted serve any greater purpose." Acknowledging that The Negotiator has "too many characters and a plot with enough twists to fill a pretzel factory," Cannon nevertheless added that "the endless and irrelevant descriptive passages are gone and someone has averted Forsyth's tendency to go off on tiresome tangents."

"Perhaps recognizing the need for sharply defined heroes and villains," stated Andrew Macdonald in the St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, "Forsyth's next book, The Deceiver, is a nostalgic look back to the good old days (at least for field agents and writers) of the Cold War, when political positions seemed eternally frozen and villainy could be motivated simply by nationality." For British agent Sam McCready, those days were a series of successes. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the government is poised to eliminate his position. As part of his protest against the retirement forced on him, McCready recounts four of his most successful exploits. McCready loses the protest and is sent into retirement. Forsyth nonetheless ends the novel on an uncertain note, with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. "The notion that international crises are over, that a new and peaceful world order will prevail, is immediately proved wrong," Macdonald noted. "All that has changed is the names, cultures, and ideologies of the players, and there will always be a need for new versions of Sam McCready, Forsyth suggests."

The author revisits this changing world order in The Fist of God, which tells of a secret mission to Iraq in an attempt to prevent the use of a catastrophic doomsday weapon. The intelligence situation in Iraq's closed society has become critical, and the western allies recruit a young version of Sam McCready—Major Mike Martin—to obtain the information they need. Martin's mission is to contact an Israeli "mole," a secret agent planted in Iraq by the Mossad, Israel's secret service, years before. In the process he also encounters rumors of Saddam's ultimate weapon—a weapon he must destroy in order to ensure a western victory. "As with his best works," wrote Macdonald in the St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, "Forsyth gives a sense of peering behind the curtains created by governments and media, allowing a vision of how the real battles, mostly invisible, were carried out."

In Icon, Forsyth turns to contemporary Russian politics for a thriller about a presidential candidate with ties to the Russian mafia and plans for wholesale ethnic cleans- ing at home and renewed Russian aggression abroad. Jason Monk, ex-CIA agent, is hired by an unlikely group of Russian and American global players to get rid of candidate Igor Komarov before the election. "As usual," wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, "Forsyth interweaves speculation with historical fact, stitching his plot pieces with a cogent analysis of both Russian politics and the world of espionage." Although Anthony Lejeune, writing in the National Review, believed that "the scale is too large, the mood too chilly, for much personal involvement" with the novel's characters, J.D. Reed claimed in People that "Icon finds the master in world-class form."

Forsyth experimented with atypical projects in 1999 with his sequel to Phantom of the Opera, and in 2000 with a group of five short stories and a novella originally published online and then in book form. With The Phantom of Manhattan, Forsyth posits a new life for the Phantom, Erik Muhlheim, subject of the gothic classic and the fabulously popular musical. In Forsyth's take, Muhlheim makes it to New York where he makes millions on Wall Street, opens his own opera house, and hires his long-desired love interest, Christine de Chagney, to sing for him. A critic for Publishers Weekly found that Forsyth "brings the Phantom to life in a new way, in an invigorating parable about loneliness, greed, and love." With The Veteran and Other Stories, Forsyth presents a mixture of tales, from a police procedural to a high-class art scam to Custer's Last Stand. Ronnie H. Terpening, writing in the Library Journal, felt that the usual Forsyth trademarks, "revenge, mystery, murder, [and] deception," are all present in these stories "that showcase the author's ability to capture character and generate suspense in remarkably few words." D.J. Taylor, reviewing the collection in the Spectator, also had praise for these five "‘tall stories’: brisk little conceits or incidents that in lesser hands would dry up in a dozen pages or so but which Forsyth's narrative guile has no trouble in fleshing out to, in some cases, novella length." However, for Taylor the downside to Forsyth's usual compilation of detail is that "it is clearly now an authorial fixation, a pageant of rococo embellishments that frequently elbows aside the narrative it adorns."

Forsyth has more scope for such accumulation of detail in his 2003 thriller Avenger. Calvin Dexter was a former special operations man in Vietnam who worked in the tunnels stalking the Vietcong. Now a lawyer by day, he is the Avenger at other times, tracking down and bringing to justice those who try to escape the law. Hired by a mining tycoon to find the Serbian killer of his grandson in Bosnia, Dexter takes on the mission of his life, tracking the killer to South America and battling both the Serbian killer's impeccable security apparatus and an FBI man trying to use the killer as bait to capture the terrorist Usama bin Laden.

Critics spoke of this novel being on a par with the author's first three books. For example, a critic for Publishers Weekly felt that this "strong and memorable novel is [Forsyth's] best in decades," and that the machinations of the Avenger in getting his man are "pure gold." Booklist's Connie Fletcher commended Forsyth's "crisp narration" as well as his "extraordinary care with detail, his solid voice, and his exquisite pacing." All these factors combine to make Avenger a "totally engrossing thriller," according to Fletcher. Similarly, Library Journal's Robert Conroy called the novel "gripping, complex, and exciting." Conroy concluded that this "well-written tale of evil and retribution" compares "favorably" to Forsyth's classic The Day of the Jackal.

In 2006's The Afghan, which a critic for Kirkus Reviews dubbed "the Forsyth Formula, al-Qaeda version," British and American intelligence forces get wind of a looming al-Qaeda terrorist strike. Unfortunately, they do not know when or where the strike will take place. Former British Army colonel Mike Martin, who first appeared in 1994's The Fist of God, is pulled from retirement to help foil the terrorists' plan. He assumes the identity of an imprisoned Taliban member, Izmat Khan, so he can infiltrate the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Martin, who looks the part and is multilingual, is able to play the role of Khan with ease. "It's an inventive story, and Forsyth spins it eloquently," praised Booklist's David Pitt, who added that the novel contains plenty of "nail-biting suspense." Robert Conroy wrote in his Library Journal review that "even though it starts slowly, it builds to an exciting climax." Following on Forsyth's typical style of meticulously researching his books, he mentioned in a interview with Sue Fox for the London Times that he went to Washington, Kabul, Islamabad, and Peshawar to gather information for The Afghan. "Normally I have a contact, a friend, or friend of a friend, who can set up meetings with people I need to speak to: the chief of police, the governor of the jail, the head of special forces," said Forsyth in the interview.

It has always been the plots and technical details in his novels that have most fascinated Forsyth. "Invention of the story is the most fun," the author told Peter Gorner in the Chicago Tribune. "It's satisfying, like doing a jigsaw or a crossword." He admitted to Groen that he loves the research: "I quite enjoy going after the facts. I put into my books a pretty heavy diet of factuality." Recognizing that Forsyth is aiming to entertain his audience with these techniques, Macdonald wrote that a "common element in all the criticism [against the author] is a refusal to accept Forsyth's docudrama formula for what it is, but rather to assume it should be more conventionally ‘fictional.’" Forsyth has sold over thirty million books to readers who know, as Detroit News contributor Jay Carr put it, that the thrill of the author's books lies not in finding out how "Forsyth is going to defuse the bomb whose wick he ignites, but rather to see how he works out the details."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bestsellers 89, Issue 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 36, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction, Salem Press (Pasadena, CA), 1988.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 87: British Mystery and Thriller Writers since 1940, First Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers, 4th edition, St. James (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

American Theatre, April, 2000, Celia Wren, "Money Sings," p. 49.

Armchair Detective, May, 1974; winter, 1985.

Atlantic, December, 1972; August, 1974.

Book, November-December, 2001, Helen M. Jerome, "Return to Formula: Frederick Forsyth Is Back in Business," p. 24.

Book and Magazine Collector, June, 1989.

Booklist, March 1, 1994, p. 1139; October 15, 1999, Ray Olson, review of The Phantom of Manhattan, p. 417; August, 2001, David Pitt, review of The Veteran and Other Stories, p. 2096; July, 2003, Connie Fletcher, review of Avenger, p. 1845; August 1, 2006, David Pitt, review of The Afghan, p. 50.

Book World, September 5, 1971, J.R. Frakes, review of The Day of the Jackal.

Boston Herald, November 22, 1999, Terry Byrne Mug, "Frederick Forsyth's Uninspired Sequel Skimps on Story: Phantom Sequel Is Unmasked," p. 37.

Chicago Tribune, October 16, 1984; April 16, 1989; June 14, 1989.

Chicago Tribune Book World, March 2, 1980, Peter Gorner, review of The Devil's Alternative.

Christian Science Monitor, September 7, 1984.

Daily News, September 30, 1984.

Daily Telegraph, December 18, 1999, Hugh Massingberd, "After the Phantom Vanished into Thin Air Hugh Massingberd Is Hooked by the Sequel to a Tale of Obsessive and Unrequited Passion"; October 6, 2001, Will Cohu, "Let's Twist Again."

Detroit News, February 10, 1980; August 15, 1982; April 30, 1989.

Economist, December 7, 1996, p. S3; October 18, 2003, review of Avenger, p. 84.

Entertainment Weekly, May 20, 1994, p. 55; October 3, 2003, Marc Bernardin, review of Avenger, p. 78; August 25, 2006, Will Boisvert, review of The Afghan, p. 91.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 8, 1984; August 29, 1987; April 29, 1989, Margaret Cannon, review of The Negotiator; November 27, 1999, p. D38.

Guardian (London, England), August 16, 1994, p. 3.

Independent (London, England), December 12, 2001, p. S8.

Insight on the News, July 11, 1994, p. 28.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1999, p. 1517; July 1, 2006, review of The Afghan, p. 647.

Library Journal, September 1, 2001, Ronnie H. Terpening, review of The Veteran and Other Stories, p. 237; July 1, 2006, Robert Conroy, review of The Afghan, p. 64.

Life, October 22, 1971.

Listener, June 17, 1971; September 28, 1972; January 10, 1980.

Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1980; March 28, 1980; May 7, 1982; August 28, 1987; January 27, 2002, Eugene Weber, review of The Veteran and Other Stories, p. R8.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 16, 1989.

National Observer, October 30, 1971.

National Review, August 2, 1974; December 23, 1996, Anthony Lejeune, review of Icon, p. 56.

New Leader, April 7, 1980.

New Statesman, September 20, 1974; January 15, 1988.

New Statesman & Society, September 6, 1991, pp. 35-36.

Newsweek, July 22, 1974, Anthony Collins, review of The Dogs of War; May 1, 1978; April 24, 1989, Harry Anderson, review of The Negotiator.

New York Post, September 21, 1974.

New York Times, October 24, 1972; April 18, 1978; January 17, 1980; August 30, 1984, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Fourth Protocol; August 28, 1987; November 16, 1999, Alan Cowell, "Jackal's Day Has Passed: Forsyth Tails the Phantom," p. E1.

New York Times Book Review, August 15, 1971; December 5, 1971; November 5, 1972; July 14, 1974; October 16, 1977; February 24, 1980; March 2, 1980; May 9, 1982; September 2, 1984; April 16, 1989.

Observer (London, England), June 13, 1971; September 24, 1972; September 22, 1974.

People, October 22, 1984; July 18, 1994, p. 24; October 21, 1996, J.D. Reed, review of Icon, p. 40.

Playboy, July, 1989, p. 26; November, 1991, p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, August 9, 1971; September 30, 1974; March 17, 1989; August 9, 1991, p. 43; March 7, 1994, p. 51; August 12, 1996, review of Icon, p. 61; May 18, 1998, Jean Richardson, "Forsyth's Phantom Sequel," p. 22; September 6, 1999, review of The Phantom of Manhattan, p. 77; November 20, 2000, review of The Veteran and Other Stories, p. 37; July 28, 2003, review of Avenger, p. 77; June 5, 2006, review of The Afghan, p. 33.

Saturday Review, September 4, 1971; September 9, 1972.

Spectator, August 2, 1969, Auberon Waugh, review of The Biafra Story; December 11, 1999, p. 62; September 8, 2001, D.J. Taylor, review of The Veteran and Other Stories, p. 41.

Time, September 3, 1984, John Skow, review of The Fourth Protocol.

Times (London, England), August 22, 1982; March 17, 1987; May 13, 1989; November 17, 2001, p. W1; September 16, 2006, Sue Fox, interview with Frederick Forsyth.

Times Educational Supplement, December 17, 1999, p. 19.

Times Literary Supplement, July 2, 1971; October 25, 1974; December 19, 1975; November 19, 1999, p. 24.

Wall Street Journal, April 12, 1989; April 18, 1989.

Washington Post, August 19, 1971; September 26, 1971; December 12, 1978; February 13, 1981; March 28, 1984; August 29, 1987; April 21, 1989, John Katzenbach, review of The Negotiator.

Washington Post Book World, February 3, 1980; August 26, 1984, Roderick MacLeish, review of The Fourth Protocol.

World Press Review, March, 1980; May, 1987.