Icon

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Summary: A page turner that is educational.
Review: Forsyth makes you wonder about current states in Russia and makes you compare it with the history of the world. Our main character, Jason Monk, comes across as a very believable hero. It is a James Bond story without the exageration. Still, It attracted my attention because of the simplicity of the story and how the actions were achieved.

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Summary: Thrilling view of a possible future Russia.
Review: Thrilling and very detailed work. Easy read. Very cloak and dagger/james bond style of adventure. Good language(no swearing). Characters are very plausable and add to the suspence of the story. Wonderful history of Russia and its quest of a unified nation without Communism.

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Summary: Suspense builds like a rollercoaster
Review: This Forsyth novel starts rather slowly but then takes off like a literary rollercoaster. No simple plot here; this story of how a cabal thwarts the election of a Russian despot-to-be, spearheaded by a former CIA master spy, is intricately plotted but doesn't lose the reader in a jumble of story lines. Obviously well researched, the background information is richly detailed in a way that enhances the story without bogging it down. Definitely a good read (and I see miniseries potential).

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Summary: rich character development and a well-woven story
Review: as a first time reader of forsyth, i find this book most appealing. the story line is believable, and like early ludlum and michael crichton, evidence of thorough research abounds. the multitude of characters, combined with the daunting 567 pages at first intimidated me. i predicted a tangled mess, wherein the names become hopelessly tangled within the storyline. alas, this was not to be. the past, present and future all come together through the characters, who are so richly described as to be almost visible. after i finished, i regretted that the ending was not more dramatic and heroic. in retrospect, this is what separates this book from the pack of stories whose endings are so unbelievable as to destroy all the preceding pages. i look forward to back filling my library with other forsyth offerings.

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Summary: disappointing effort from author who can do much better
Review: i read somewhere once that forsyth takes a year to research each book and icon feels as though he was loath to let any of his hard work go to waste. he spends far too much time on aldrich ames when he should have been trying to make his characters more interesting and believable. to think one single agent could somehow bring down the future arch-baddie of russia is just risible. the main problem is that you know exactly how the book is going to finish, and packing each page with details of modern moscow does not compensate for a fundamental lack of suspense. and where were the female characters? all in all, not a patch on the odessa file.

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Summary: One of the best books I've read in a long time.
Review: After the Odessa File, I thought that there was going to be no equal. I then read the Devils Alternative and was thoroughly disappointed. Icon changed my mind. I believe this to be by far Forsyth's best work. It never slowed down, and hit you hard at all the right times. The suspense only added to the entire flow of the book. I never wanted to put it down because I was scared I would miss something. Forsyth has an amazing knack for mixing well known facts, with the most believable fictional scenarios that keeps readers coming back to his novels. I personally cannot wait for the next one.

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Summary: A pay-off that delivers the goods when it's supposed to!
Review: Too many times, when I read a thriller, I pass right over the climax without even knowing it. I'll get to the resolution and say "Hey! What gives." Then I have to thumb back and find the climax which the author put earlier than I expected. This ruins the flow. Not so with "Icon". It's action...action...action...BANG! I was able to enjoy the resolution because the showdown came where it was expected. I give this book the honor of hoping they DON'T make it into a film. I know it will be missing something. But who knows, look how "Day of the Jackal" came out.

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Summary: disappointing, compared to his other books
Review: Forsythe's other books which I've read, The Negotiator and The Deceiver gripped the reader because they had an interesting believable main character. Because the plot of Icon contains many different players and points in time, the reader needs to care about someone in the book. Although we know that we are supposed to care about Monk and Irvine, they never give us more than fleeting reasons to do so. Also, there is no strong female character in the book. Females briefly come and go, used for quick sex and convenience to the plot. About halfway through the book starts to seem like the author lost interest. Like many products of Hollywood today, when the director (author) loses his way, the result is a push to finish rather than a retreat to find out what went astray. I read 200 pages earnestly, 200 pages dutifully, and 100 pages really fast in order to be finished.

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Summary: Getting there's the fun with Forsyth
Review: As a first-time Forsyth reader, I enjoyed this book so much, I'm a little hesitant to go back for more. So many of these "spy-thriller" novels are so much pulp. The scene is set, good and bad characters introduced, and the plot trots off towards the ending--good guys win, bad guys lose. While Forsyth does not change the beginning or the end, the way he handles the middle makes getting there the fun. Bad guys are good guys (the Chechens). Good guys are bad guys (and right in the Patriarchs house). Innocent characters are sacrificed (on the frozen river banks of Moscow and the frosty hills of England). You know what's coming, but not how you're going to get there. Moreover, Forsyth apparently writes with a familiarity that allows him to move away from the cliched niveaus of other writers (believe it or not, the Kremlin and St. Basil's are not the only spy haunts in Moscow). The characters are rich, the action fast-paced and the details convincingly real. Just a little more variety in the ending would have pushed this book to a "10" on my list. It is truly an entertaining book, and a great read.

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Summary: Un-like many of the above, I liked the flash backs
Review: Part one interrupts the urgency of the plot with leisurely interludes following Aldrich Ames as a total incompetent who continued to be promoted and building an argument that the CIA has lost its mission and nobody really cares--afterall, the cold war is over. Part Two builds on the theme that assasination plots always fail