Avenger
[Books]
Review by MARC LOURDES
Author: Frederick Forsyth
Publisher: Bantam Press, 347 pgs
ALMOST every person who has read a spy caper will tell you that the basic premise of a hero whose job is to slay the villain is neither new nor extraordinary.
But consider how the scenario is altered if the mandate is not to slay, but to apprehend the bad guy unscathed right from under the noses of the best security that money can buy. And to do it alone, without any form of backup or help from anybody.
Curiosity piqued? Well, then drop by the nearest bookstore and pick up Frederick Forsyth’s Avenger. Or, actually, don’t buy it if you have a major event coming up, because once you start reading Avenger, you will not be able to put it down, just as this reviewer was unable to, at the cost of messing up his final exams.
A young American aid volunteer, Ricky Colenso, is brutally murdered in what was once Yugoslavia and his grandfather, Canadian billionaire and mining magnate Steven Edmond, is hell-bent on vengeance.
His thirst for revenge leads him to engage the services of Cal Dexter, a Vietnam Special Forces veteran and member of an elite fighting unit, the Tunnel Rats. Dexter could possibly be the one person capable of bringing the murderer, Zoran Zilic, to justice.
However, what starts out as a manhunt to satiate a personal vendetta and appease a personal, domestic tragedy soon explodes into a terrifying drama on the centre stage of world terrorism, bringing into play a host of uncomfortable questions like, is it worth sacrificing one life if it could probably save a hundred or a thousand others?
Avenger takes the reader on a breathtaking ride to all the global hotspots in the past 30 or 40 years, and the reader is subjected to a painful close-up view of the battlefields of Vietnam, war-torn Serbia and the deadly jungles of South America.
Forsyth manages to meld riveting detail, breathtaking action and political intrigue along with richly fleshed-out characters into a tour de force of literary suspense.
At the end, the blurring of the lines between fact and fiction was so successful that this reviewer was left wondering what was true and what wasn’t. Forsyth creates a virtual potpourri of characters with real-life figures like Osama bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic placed right alongside the fictitious (or are they?) personalities in his book.
Forsyth’s graphic description of Colenso’s death sears itself onto the reader’s memory and is made all the more painful when it is recalled that it is just one of many such atrocities that has taken place in the many wars before, and no doubt will continue to take place in many wars to come.
Also, keep a close watch on the timeline. At first, it would appear that it is pretty pointless but as the story progresses, it will become more and more relevant, building up to the most infamous date in recent history.
All in all, Avenger has all the necessary ingredients needed for a satisfying suspense thriller, plus a little bit more. Besides the book title and author’s name, the front cover of Frederick Forsyth’s Avenger has another caption on it which reads: The Master Storyteller.
Judging by the evidence of Forsyth’s offering in Avenger, that statement would be hard to refute, and if his other books are of a similar high quality, then this reviewer will be hitting the bookstores very, very soon.
Review by MARC LOURDES
Author: Frederick Forsyth
Publisher: Bantam Press, 347 pgs
ALMOST every person who has read a spy caper will tell you that the basic premise of a hero whose job is to slay the villain is neither new nor extraordinary.
But consider how the scenario is altered if the mandate is not to slay, but to apprehend the bad guy unscathed right from under the noses of the best security that money can buy. And to do it alone, without any form of backup or help from anybody.
Curiosity piqued? Well, then drop by the nearest bookstore and pick up Frederick Forsyth’s Avenger. Or, actually, don’t buy it if you have a major event coming up, because once you start reading Avenger, you will not be able to put it down, just as this reviewer was unable to, at the cost of messing up his final exams.
A young American aid volunteer, Ricky Colenso, is brutally murdered in what was once Yugoslavia and his grandfather, Canadian billionaire and mining magnate Steven Edmond, is hell-bent on vengeance.
His thirst for revenge leads him to engage the services of Cal Dexter, a Vietnam Special Forces veteran and member of an elite fighting unit, the Tunnel Rats. Dexter could possibly be the one person capable of bringing the murderer, Zoran Zilic, to justice.
However, what starts out as a manhunt to satiate a personal vendetta and appease a personal, domestic tragedy soon explodes into a terrifying drama on the centre stage of world terrorism, bringing into play a host of uncomfortable questions like, is it worth sacrificing one life if it could probably save a hundred or a thousand others?
Avenger takes the reader on a breathtaking ride to all the global hotspots in the past 30 or 40 years, and the reader is subjected to a painful close-up view of the battlefields of Vietnam, war-torn Serbia and the deadly jungles of South America.
Forsyth manages to meld riveting detail, breathtaking action and political intrigue along with richly fleshed-out characters into a tour de force of literary suspense.
At the end, the blurring of the lines between fact and fiction was so successful that this reviewer was left wondering what was true and what wasn’t. Forsyth creates a virtual potpourri of characters with real-life figures like Osama bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic placed right alongside the fictitious (or are they?) personalities in his book.
Forsyth’s graphic description of Colenso’s death sears itself onto the reader’s memory and is made all the more painful when it is recalled that it is just one of many such atrocities that has taken place in the many wars before, and no doubt will continue to take place in many wars to come.
Also, keep a close watch on the timeline. At first, it would appear that it is pretty pointless but as the story progresses, it will become more and more relevant, building up to the most infamous date in recent history.
All in all, Avenger has all the necessary ingredients needed for a satisfying suspense thriller, plus a little bit more. Besides the book title and author’s name, the front cover of Frederick Forsyth’s Avenger has another caption on it which reads: The Master Storyteller.
Judging by the evidence of Forsyth’s offering in Avenger, that statement would be hard to refute, and if his other books are of a similar high quality, then this reviewer will be hitting the bookstores very, very soon.
posted by 9T9 at
3:18 pm
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