Rating: 
Summary: One of Forsyth's best, a flat out classic.
Review: "The deciever" is the best. Three short stories compile the best of the deciever's career with British inteligence. The stories span the cold war and take the deciever all around the world. This book is to good to describe. A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: One of his best works !!!
Review: 4 stories and each one riveting to the core. For the reader of espionage and the like, this is grade A stuff. The first two stories ran a tingle down my spine, not from fear but from the sheer truthness reflectecd in them and that somebody could write like this. The last story, though, could have been better.
Rating: 
Summary: Fading Star
Review: Cast as the Forsyth-lover's Forsyth, this is a series of short stories about a fictitious superspy, McCready, a spinner of misinformation. There are some highlights - the Carribbean sojourn is memorable - but in his attempt to distill the essence of Forsyth, Forsyth abandons the essence of Forsyth. His greatest books were, as the "Law and Order" trailers say, "ripped from the headlines"; stories of intrigues so authentic you'd think they really happened. (To this day, many believe an Englishman tried to kill de Gaulle; most believe The Odessa File to be gospel and Dogs of War to be based on a true life incident). In descending into mellower, more anonymous yarns of spy-vs-spy, Forsyth steps into Le Carre's shadow.
Rating:
Summary: Fading Star
Review: Cast as the Forsyth-lover's Forsyth, this is a series of short stories about a fictitious superspy, McCready, a spinner of misinformation. There are some highlights - the Carribbean sojourn is memorable - but in his attempt to distill the essence of Forsyth, Forsyth abandons the essence of Forsyth. His greatest books were, as the "Law and Order" trailers say, "ripped from the headlines"; stories of intrigues so authentic you'd think they really happened. (To this day, many believe an Englishman tried to kill de Gaulle; most believe The Odessa File to be gospel and Dogs of War to be based on a true life incident). In descending into mellower, more anonymous yarns of spy-vs-spy, Forsyth steps into Le Carre's shadow.
Rating:
Summary: Forsyth can be fun!
Review: Forsyth has written some of the best spy-thrillers, in an universe filled with LeCarrés, Folletts, Deightons and so on. His earlier books, such as "The day of the Jackal" and "The Odessa file" are simply marvelous pieces of research and storytelling. This book, "The Deceiver", portraits what happens to a british spy when the Cold War is over: his superiors are trying to give him an early retirement, since he's no use in these peaceful days. Maybe Forsyth wrote the story ( I mean, the four stories ), thinking what was going to happen to HIM, and other writers alike, since their primary plot in the real world was shattered altogether with the Berlim Wall. And I guess Forsyth wasn't that much worried. The first story is the heaviest one, with a psychological side. As the book goes on, you get to know the hero, MacCready, not only as a spymaster, but mainly as a person, an individual. The last story is the best one, in a mood that resembles the Agatha Christie's Poirot's detective cases. Highly recommended to people who want to learn more about Forsyth himself.
Rating:
Summary: great Cold War espionage
Review: Frederick Forsyth delivers thrilling tales of Cold War espionage in The Deceiver. The book is a collection of novellas that revolve around the career of one of British intelligence's most effective operatives. Unfortunately for that operative, he is being sent by the new administration into quiet retirement on the eve of the end of the Cold War. Using a committee review of that operative's career to link the individual episodes, Forsyth provides another entertaining character in thrilling spy tales.
Rating:
Summary: Gorby's Early Retirement Plan
Review: Frederick Forsyth has penned a most unusual collection of spy tales here. In fact four episodes from the colorful career of Sam McCready, British spy master, are provided and well-crafted. The four tales cover about 10 years and every terrorist and criminal hub in the world, including Libya, Cuba, USSR, the IRA, and East Germany.
McCready has been deemed expendable, due to his unorthodox and outrageous tactics, in a post Cold War era by very high level political and civil service leaders.
The typical story line for a prehistoric cold war operative runs like this: Operate a high level Russian spy for many years in an uneasy collaboration with the CIA. Send an overweight, aged, hard drinking West German spy into East Germany to collect a package. With the help of retired smugglers, go yourself into East Germany to retrieve the package when the West German suffers a complete break-down. Of course this needs to be done without any official sanction from the British or West German, while the KGB is also on the trail of the Russian general. Clearly these tactics have no place in the post cold war 1990's, a time of seeming safety and tranquility at least until Iraq invades Kuwait in August 1990.
The fundamental premise here is that McCready has a legal right to a deparmental hearing as a sort of protest of his forced retirement. In the hearing the four spy tales are told. This is a very unusual construct and may not appeal to all. The tales are all good, but not good enough to stand alone as Forsyth novels, and are strangely unrelated, other than that they are four cases successfully solved by our hero. This is also a book for those like me, who love the technical minutae and operational details of the covert trade.
Rating:
Summary: Great story
Review: Fun reading, hard to put dow
Rating:
Summary: Outstandingly good spy story.
Review: I've read a few spy novel by other authors, but this one has to be the best I've read to date. It's interesting how Forsyth managed to blend in the character of Sam Mcgeedy in all the four sub stories in one book. Particularly my favourite is the first two stories which involves a phony russian defections and Sam Mcgreedy involvement in a 'cross border exchange gone wrong' in Berlin. Highly intense!The detail of the story on how the procedure are done in the intelligence community prooves his thorough research on the book. This is rewarded by an overwhelming attachment and sense of realism from the reader. It is really difficult to put this book down, once you started it. Highly recommended for those who seek realism and detailed process in espionage action story.
Rating:
Summary: Serious blunder by Frederick
Review: In "The Deceiver"'s third story, one of the story's protagonists takes a Cyprus Airways flight from Malta to Cyprus, lands at the Nicosia Airport and spends the night in the Nicosia Airport Hotel. Unfortunately for Frederick there does not exist a Nicosia Airport (and therefore a Nicosia Airport Hotel as well). To be more precise, Cyprus's international airport which indeed used to be in Nicosia, was closed down in 1974 (nearly 20 years before the publication of "The Deceiver") after Turkey invaded the island and since then occupies around 40% of the land. Cyprus's international airport is in Larnaca and this is the place where all international flights go. This is a serious blunder by Frederick, considering that not only he is a quality writer but also that Cyprus was a colony of his country which even now maintains on the island 2 of her largest military bases in the Mediterranean. It would be quite interesting to know how those of the approximately 1 million British tourists that visit evey year the island and have read "The Deceiver" feel when they read this third story. Ironically, in the same third story, the protagonist who pretends to be a writer says that researching for the factual information associated with some scenario should not be taken lightly because the public has become quite demanding in expecting accurate facts to be used...!
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