Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth has packed a tremendous amount of action into his life and frequently drawn on his experiences to lend verisimilitude to his fiction.

At the age of 19, he became the youngest pilot in the Royal Air Force, but then decided to follow a journalistic career as “it was the only job that might enable me to travel and keep more or less my own hours”.

After three years as a provincial reporter, he joined Reuters and spent the next four years in Europe. In 1965 he joined the BBC and was sent to Biafra to cover the war that was raging in Nigeria. What he saw of this brutal and cynical conflict made it difficult for him to toe the editorial line of the BBC’s coverage so he resigned, turned freelance, vanished into the thick of the conflict and later emerged to publish the highly controversial The Biafra Story.

In 1969 he decided to use his experience as a Reuters reporter in France as the basis for a thriller. Within 35 day he’d completed The Day of the Jackal, which established him as one of the world’s leading thriller writers. To date it has sold in the region of 10 million copies and was made into a major film starring Edward Fox in 1973.

In a case of life imitating art, while researching his new book The Cobra, Forsyth arrived in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau on the very day that the Army chief-of-staff was murdered, allegedly by order of the President. That night, in a tit-for-tat attack, the President himself was bombed out of his residence, shot and hacked to death. Unable to leave the country, Forsyth found himself back in the role of journalist reporting on this coup for the British press.

Frederick Forsyth is married and lives in Hertfordshire. His interests include swimming, scuba-diving, game-fishing, travelling and reading. He was awarded a CBE in 1997.

Lived: 1938 -

The Cobra

In a White House meeting in 2011, a covert concordat is struck to destroy the vast world-wide cocaine industry. The man chosen is a former head of Special Ops for the CIA, Paul Devereaux, nicknamed the Cobra.

The Veteran and Other Stories

A collection of five heart-stopping stories from the master thriller writer. A miracle in war-torn Siena that begins with the persecution of a young nun in the turbulent days of the sixteenth century and culminates in the bitter German retreat from Italy; a drug smuggling heist on an international flight where the Knock pit their(…)

The Kill List

In Virginia, there is an agency bearing the bland name of Technical Operations Support Activity, or TOSA. Its one mission is to track, find, and kill those so dangerous to the United States that they are on a short document known as the Kill List. TOSA actually exists. So does the Kill List. Added to(…)

The Avenger

A young American aid volunteer, Billy Colenso, is brutally murdered in former Yugoslavia. His grandfather, the Canadian billionaire Steven Edmond, is bent on revenge. The quest to find Billy’s murderer leads Edmond to Cal Dexter, ex-Vietnam Special Forces, the one man who could bring the killer to justice. But what starts as a personal, domestic(…)

Biafra Story

This is the book, which marked Frederick Forsyth’s transition from journalist to author. A record of one of the most brutal conflicts the Third World has ever suffered, it has become a classic of modern war reporting. But it is more than that: it voices one man’s outrage, not only at the extremes of human(…)

The Day of the Jackal

An adventure thriller in which an anonymous Englishman who in the spring of 1963, was hired by Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the OAS to assassinate General De Gaulle.

The Deceiver

Sam McCready is The Deceiver, one of the Intelligence Service’s most unorthodox and most valued operatives. The end of the Cold War has, however strenghtened the hand of those in Whitehall who wish to dispose of him. Other work by the author includes “The Odessa File”.

The Devil’s Alternative

An appalling choice faces the President of the USA and other statesmen: whichever option they choose, men are going to die. But Adam Munro is unmoved. He knows that politicians have no objection to loss of life, so long as they are not seen publicly to have had anything to do with it.

The Dogs of War

In a remote corner of Zangaro, a small republic in Africa, lies Crystal Mountain. At certain times of the day the mountain emits a strange glow. Only Sir James Manson knows why. The mountain contains ten billion dollar’s worth of the world’s most valuable mineral, platinum. Now the only question is, how to get hold(…)

The Fist of God

The author of such classics as The Day of the Jackal returns with a seamless blending of the real and the imagined, of political assassination and high-tech military might, set behind the scenes of the Gulf War. As coalition forces ready for battle against the Iraqi Army, a Western spy in Baghdad seeks a mysterious(…)

The Fourth Protocol

Suspense master Frederick Forsyth, author of Dogs of War, The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, brings another ingeniously-crafted thriller to the screen. A major movie from Lorimar starring Michael Caine and Pierce Bronsan.

Icon

In a collapsing Russia of 1999, the Western alliance tries to prevent a potential fascist dictator coming to power.

The Negotiator

1991, Glasnost has its enemies, the worlds oil is running out and ruthless mercenaries have kidnapped the US president’s son. As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophe, the negotiator goes to work.

No Comebacks

Deception, murder, blackmail, revenge – these are the themes of ten stories that move from London to the coast of Spain, from Dublin to Dordogne.

The Odessa File

A package of documents, containing a list of names, arrives anonymously at the Ministry of Justice in Bonn in 1964. Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling thriller features the consequent life-and-death hunt for a notorious Nazi criminal, against a background of international arms deals.

The Phantom of Manhattan

With the help of the woman who had originally freed him from torment, the Phantom of the Opera escapes by ship to America to begin a new and secret life that leads him to power and wealth, until a mysterious death-bed message transforms his life once again.

The Shepherd

On Christmas Eve 1957, alone in the cockpit of his Vampire, an RAF pilot is returning from Germany to Lakenheath on leave – 66 minutes of trouble-free, routine flying. Then, out over the North Sea, the fog begins to close in, radio contact ceases, and the compass goes haywire.

The Afghan

When British and American intelligence catch wind of a major Al Qaeda operation in the works, they instantly galvanize- but to do what? They know nothing about it: the what, where, or when. They have no sources in Al Qaeda, and it’s impossible to plant someone. Impossible, unless . . . The Afghan is Izmat(…)

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