Best
selling author Frederick Forsythe (The Odessa File, The Day of the Jackal,
Dogs of War) is back in the news. The 71-year-old who started out as a
foreign correspondent for Reuters and the BBC before he turned to writing
popular fiction has written another thriller. “The urge to investigate never
leaves you,” he said.
That urge was used to allow Forsythe to write his most
recent book, The Cobra (ISBN 978-0-593-06422-1, Bantam Press, 2010),
but it is obvious on reading The Cobra, there was more than just a fertile
mind working on this book. It reeks of factual situations, set in real time
and real place. These were bound to ruffle a few feathers.
Interviewed on BBC, he launched an attack on the US
Intelligence forces accusing them of having launched a cyber-attack on his
wife’s lap top computer. “Everything up there in the ether is intercepted,
probably by the National Security Agency at Fort Meade in Maryland,” he
said.
Forsythe was in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau
earlier this year (and the state is in this new book), when a group of army
officers attempted a coup. He believes his presence there instigated the US
investigation.
As a writer, it is amazing to read that he does not use
computers or mobile phones. It also becomes even more cogent when the hero
of the new book, a Paul Devereux known as The Cobra, similarly eschewed such
items as being far too loose to be secure, and his number two man, Cal
Dexter likewise.
The careful planning on how to damage the Colombian drug
cartel is painstakingly laid out for the reader, and just when you are
starting to think, “Come on, how about some action!” it happens, with page
after page of heady drama all masterminded by The Cobra, and all designed to
inflict huge wounds on the cartel. The Colombian cartel is then in the
embarrassing situation of being unable to guarantee supply.
As the cartel sees its consignments blocked, disappearing
and all without a trace, it begins to look inward as to who is preparing the
leaks of information. The cartel then becomes more and more paranoid and the
gang member called The Enforcer begins to dispose of anyone suspected of
breaking the code of silence.
The Cobra then plays upon the cartel boss, feeding his
paranoia and making him think that not only did he have moles in the
organization, but recipients who had said they did not receive their
shipments were lying. This was the power of disinformation, something the
Cobra had picked up during the cold war. “Skillful disinformation is
deadly,” the Cobra informs his 2IC, Cal Dexter. The cartel organization and
the distribution network was now ready to implode.
It is a hefty book with around 400 pages of drama and well worth the
Bookazine’s RRP of B. 685. It is a thriller without a doubt and you will not
wish to put it down, but you will be forced to - there is just too much to
read and absorb in just one sitting. Best thriller I have read this year.
