Avenger

Rating:
Summary: one of his best
Review: If I were to ever become a writer, I would pattern my style after Frederick Forsyth. He never fails to keep me glued to the pages with the way he develops the characters in such a way that we care about them and root for them. I've yet to find a writer who can pack a story with a sense of adventure, intrigue and suspence like he can. At the same time, the story is believeable. There's no proof that the events which unfolded in this story did not happen; none of it is far-fetched.

The story revolves around the search for a Serbian fugitive who was responsible for the torture and death of an American aid worker. Due to the dangerous nature of this job, a specialist must be called in. This specialist is Cal Dexter who was a tunnel rat in Vietnam. Cal's mission is to capture the fugitive and then bring him to justice, but there is someone in the FBI who doesn't want this to happen. Ironically, the capture of the fugitive can have diasterous ramifications.



Rating:
Summary: Forsythe's Forte
Review: The Avenger is the type of spy thriller that Forsythe does best.

It begins in Bosnia during the Bosnia/ Serb mess and ends in an obscure Central American country in September, 1991. Do not be alarmed, Forsythe does not trade on 9/11. However, he tracks a Serbian underworld figure and ties him in with 1991 terrorists.

Forsythe crafts the novel out of a series of chapters jumping from one character's biography to the present to another biography and back to the unfolding yarn. As he goes, you begin to see the intertwining relationships as they gather. Eventually they build to an exciting and very clever climax.

The characters are terrific. There are the black and white bad guys and good guys and one extremely thought-provoking character who takes the ends justifies the means tact. One is left wondering at the end which is better - the really really good guy or the guy who looks at the end, then the means. It is that conundrum that separates the Avenger from a mere thriller.

As all of Forsythe's books, it is well-written and researched. Well worth the read. Also, if you listen to the unabridged book on cassette, the reader is terrific.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of the year
Review: I listen to a several audio books a month and have to rate this book probably the best that I have heard or read all year.
The book keeps you wanting to keep reading, and the ending is very good too.


Rating:
Summary: The End Justifies the Read
Review: Great ending! Most unexpected and satisfying. I also like that the main protagonist and hero is an old guy. 50+ ain't what it used to be! - Robert John Estko, author of the political/military espionage thriller, EVIL, BE GONE (available on Amazon.com)

Rating:
Summary: Justice vs. national political expediency. . . ?
Review: This author's method is to lead you into the story small detail by small detail, revealing characters' personalities and histories as needed, and -- in this case -- giving the reader a short course in the appalling history of the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the mutual genocidal efforts of most of its ethnic groups. Ricky Colenso is an teenage idealist, scion of a wealthy U.S./Canadian family, and his desire to make a difference leads him to volunteer as an aid worker in Bosnia over the summer. Then he disappears (though the reader knows what happened to him before the other characters do) and his wealthy grandfather, a veteran of the Battle of Britain, pays a man known as the "Tracker" to uncover his fate. Later, he will also pay another specialist, the "Avenger" to bring Ricky's killer to justice. That would be the formula for a harrowing tale of revenge all by itself, but there's more: The targeted killer is being assisted by someone high up in the CIA as a matter of "the lesser evil for the greater good." And all this is taking place in the summer and early fall of 2001. Forsyth leaves you to wonder whether a righteous attitude toward justice is necessarily the best way to go, knowing what we now know. This has the potential to make a terrific film.

Rating:
Summary: Really a 3.5 star rating
Review: Rating System:
1 star = abysmal; some books deserve to be forgotten
2 star = poor; a total waste of time
3 star = good; worth the effort
4 star = very good; what writing should be
5 star = fantastic; must own it and share it with others

STORY: Mercenary, Cal Dexter, is hired to track down a notorious criminal while dodging the CIA, foreign governments and the bad guys own army

MY FEEDBACK:

CONTENT - Graphic on the violence that left me feeling uneasy for the fact that the portrayals seemed to truly capture Evil. This made for us hating the bad guy more, but it was a bit too much information

CHARACTERS - Pages are given to the backgrounds of characters in an attempt to provide depth, but came across as an information dump at times. Good guy is likeable, bad guy is detestable, and those in-between play their necessary roles. It all works and in the end we do want to see more of Cal, which is a good thing

SETTING - Modern day, making use of recent historical facts, the setting plays its part. The bad guy's hold-out was a bit unbelievable, but the explanations leave it semi-satisfactorily acceptable

PLOT - At first I couldn't figure out where the story was headed and how events and characters were connected. Yet, through a complicated but well described process all parties come together to play their part. Nice ending too boot.

OVERALL - Good story, which is a good thing since this is my first experience with Mr. Forsyth's writing. If it wasn't for the overly graphic violence and the character information dumps, I would have rated this higher. Still worth a read/listen


Rating:
Summary: AVENGE my lost weekend
Review:
Bottom line first- A relatively good story fails to save this novel from horrible narration, lack of prose, no tangible characters, and a laconic technical style of writing that is unfit for publishing.

Mr. Forsyth, wake me up when you decide to replace editors. The first 168 pages (out of 350) are just a very prolonged exposition that goes forever about the histories of every character, with little or no actual plot development, ruining any chance of thrill or even interest. The style is quick, very dry and overly detailed (yes- for those blindly praising the author's careful detailing, albeit impressive, there is still such a thing is over-detailing as he describes every irrelevant minutiae of human history.)

The narration is at times overly elaborated and unliterary, going all over the place in the half-fiction half-fact style that is common for Forsyth, but this time fails to set the plot in motion. Everything- situations, characters, and motives, are all half-baked. The pacing for history and scenes crucial to the plot are the same.
The entire novel reads like some technical report, and as such manages to detach the reader. Nothing is written in the actual now of the story, the characters are virtually non-existent and there is almost no dialogue, and the result is there are no scenes that you can imagine, like in a normal novel.

Because of all this there is no suspense or thrill in this book, despite what some of the reviewers here maintain, and to the reviewer that praised the characterization in the book (?!?) I can only recommend reading any work by Le Carre, or previous works by Forsyth, since she has obviously no idea what a real novel looks like.

I know all this might seem like an overly artistic approach to review this novel, but believe you me, the style of this book is so bizarre that I personally found it impossible to get through it.

Too bad that a good intrigue story about the Bosnia war, an interesting life of a Vietnam tunnel rat, Anti-terrorism agents and cool gun-blazing vengeance in the dark jungles of south America are all ruined because the author decided to write a report instead of a novel.

A far cry from Forsyth's earlier works.


Rating:
Summary: Was this written by Frederick Forsyth?
Review: A villain who has disappeared from public view and now stays hidden in a fortress guarded by piranha filled canals, shark infested seas, man-eating dogs and machine-gun toting guards.

Unfortunately this isn't a James Bond novel, it's actually written by Frederick Forsyth. How the author of "Day of the Jackal" and "The Odessa File" could perpetrate this piece of pulp is beyond me. Suffice to say Frederick Forsyth trying to write like Ian Fleming or Robert Ludlum is not worth it. Definitely to be avoided if you are a Frederick Forsyth fan and even more so if you haven't read any of his novels before.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: After The Phantom of Manhattan Forsyth returned to his first kind of books with the Veteran and Avenger... but results are not at the same level of books from his 'first life'. The theme of this book is not so distant from "The Dogs of war", but the book lacks the details that made Forsyth one of my favourite authors...

Simply disappointing.