Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely riveting.
Review: There's no doubt about it. Frederick Forsyth knows how to spin a yarn. This international thriller takes the reader on a roller coaster ride that doesn't stop until the very last page.
If, as many believe, The Day of the Jackal is the greatest novel of international intrigue ever written, The Devil's Alternative cannot be far behind.
Maxim Rudin is the President of the USSR and General Secretary of the Communist Party. He's having a very bad year. Not only is his health failing but his country faces an impending famine. His enemies within the Politburo are plotting to oust him from power even as a group of Ukrainian nationalists plan murder and mayhem to embarrass the regime. The US President, Bill Matthews, has come to the realization that only a massive infusion of American grain can prevent a starving Soviet Union from starting World War III.
Superimposed on this backdrop are a number of other interesting subplots. These include a forbidden romance between a British intelligence officer and a Russian woman and the maiden voyage of the largest oil tanker the world has ever seen.
Forsyth seamlessly weaves together all plot elements in a way that captures the reader's imagination and holds it at gunpoint. Throughout the book, there are a number of genuinely surprising twists which are really quite remarkable to behold.
The meticulous attention to detail that characterizes all of Forsyth's writing is very much alive and well here. It's hard to imagine the scope and depth of research that went into bringing this book to life.
The Devil's Alternative is a monumental achievement. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: If you put this down, you must dead ( and cold ) already !
Review: This book is one of the best I have ever read. Forsyth tells his tale with such skill, that you almost believe the story is real. He has such a grasp on international politics and secret services, and such a masterful command of the storytelling art, that you have to page through this book no matter what other things you should actually be doing.The suspense is rather high, and the story very complex without becoming either convulted or impossible. READ IT !
Rating:
Summary: fast and changing scenarios for a plot of high suspense
Review: This is a book that typifies the 'cold war' era and the efforts of various intelligence organizations as exemplified by the KGB in the East and the CIA in the West to get at each other. The book, though not like one of the "Sherlock Holmes series" is nevertheless in a class of its own in postulating espionage modus operandi
Rating:
Summary: A very good book.
Review: This is one of Forsyth's best books. A very good plot -- kept me riveted and surprised. I think this is probably one of his best books,
although it is certainly not his best known. A very "cold-war" book, but it's definitely worth buying the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: SIMPLY AMAZING
Review: This is one of the best books i've ever read. It simply surpasses the class which was shown by foresyth in 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Odessa File'. Slow to start with, this gets exciting with every page. I would say one hasn't read the book till he has read the last page. The amount of research on diffent topics, geography and espionage world put by foresyth is simply amazing. The Climax is mind boggling. A must read for all espionage literature fans
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Airport Novel
Review: This once sustained me for the entire length of a long haul jet trip and it will do this for you, too, especially if you want to travel back to the days where the Soviet Union was bad, bad, bad, and the Kremlin was a medieval house of torture. It is the last of Forsyth's masterworks and even if it requires a Cold-War retro-mindset, it still sizzles.
Rating: 
Summary: Another exciting thriller by the master
Review: When catasthrophe hit the grain harvest of the Soviet Union, the Politburo must decide whether to negotiate with the West for grains, or go to war, or suffer mass uprising. No one in the Kremlin wants the last possibility to happen, so two factions emerged, with the bare majority, including the Secretary-General, advocating negotiation. Through a Kremlin informant for British agent Adam Munro, the British PM and the US President learned just how desperate the situation in the USSR was. Meanwhile, the survivor of a shipwreck in the Mediterranean aroused the interest of a British Andrew Drake. Drake descended from a Ukrainian nationlist, whose mission in life was to strike a humiliating blow against the USSR, and the shipwreck survivor provided him with an opportunity to do just that. Somehow, the different threads spun by the author in the book came together, climaxing with the world being held hostage to an all-out war between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, or the greatest environmental catasthrophy yet. The author did not stint on fleshing out his characters, providing them with ample description, motivations and attributes that the reader can just imagine the kind of actors and actresses that would be cast if this was a movie. Plot development were fast and furious sometimes, yet deliberately slow and detailed at others, paced out well like the different variations of a symphony, but never a dull moment. In the end, it will be up to our hero Adam Munro to save the world from the various catasthrophies, and the numerous twists in the end came round a blind corner, hitting the readers where they least expect (unless of course, they've been reading way too much thrillers like me who managed to guess a couple of them).
Rating:
Summary: Another exciting thriller by the master
Review: When catasthrophe hit the grain harvest of the Soviet Union, the Politburo must decide whether to negotiate with the West for grains, or go to war, or suffer mass uprising. No one in the Kremlin wants the last possibility to happen, so two factions emerged, with the bare majority, including the Secretary-General, advocating negotiation. Through a Kremlin informant for British agent Adam Munro, the British PM and the US President learned just how desperate the situation in the USSR was. Meanwhile, the survivor of a shipwreck in the Mediterranean aroused the interest of a British Andrew Drake. Drake descended from a Ukrainian nationlist, whose mission in life was to strike a humiliating blow against the USSR, and the shipwreck survivor provided him with an opportunity to do just that. Somehow, the different threads spun by the author in the book came together, climaxing with the world being held hostage to an all-out war between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, or the greatest environmental catasthrophy yet. The author did not stint on fleshing out his characters, providing them with ample description, motivations and attributes that the reader can just imagine the kind of actors and actresses that would be cast if this was a movie. Plot development were fast and furious sometimes, yet deliberately slow and detailed at others, paced out well like the different variations of a symphony, but never a dull moment. In the end, it will be up to our hero Adam Munro to save the world from the various catasthrophies, and the numerous twists in the end came round a blind corner, hitting the readers where they least expect (unless of course, they've been reading way too much thrillers like me who managed to guess a couple of them).
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