Frederick Forsyth’s return
after a fiction hiatus of five years sees his thriller The Fox published before it’s really ready. It seems rushed, for
reasons I’ll go into soon, and is sadly unsatisfactory, and I believe the blame
can be shared equally between Mr Forsyth and the publisher.
The publisher should do
better. The list of books by Forsyth is impressive, with The Outsider following on from The
Kill List, below which are two Non-fiction books listed, The Biafra Story and Emeka. Don’t Bantam Press know that The Outsider is non-fiction, being his
autobiography?
The story is about a young
British man, Luke Jennings, with Asperger’s Syndrome who has hacked into the US
security system. Together with his family (mother, father, brother) he is arrested
and they're sequestered in a safe place in England. Rather than prosecute him, both the Americans
and the British decide to make use of his considerable gifts to tilt the balance of
power – to interfere with Russian, North Korean and Chinese computer-linked
weapons systems.
Forsyth’s page-turning
ability is apparent as he peppers the story with facts and details about the
clandestine and political world, even including most recent events, such as the
Skripal poisonings in Salisbury and the summit meetings with North Korea. As
usual, Forsyth employs his omniscient third person narrative, creating that
immediacy of a reporter viewing events unfolding. Unfortunately, that technique
here leaves little room for emotion. In truth, I felt that the book reads more
like a film treatment than a novel; it was all tell, tell, tell and not much show.
It’s a quirk of mine, but I
find it annoying when a character is referred to in two different ways. The
putative hero is Sir Adrian Weston. Most of the time, we get Adrian or Sir
Adrian. But then he drops in Weston. Bond was always Bond; end of.
The utilisation of Luke is
serious wishful thinking, breaking down foreign firewalls virtually at the drop
of a hat. Luke’s technical shepherd who directs the lad’s hacking activities is
Jeremy Hendricks, who (to tick a box) ‘was gay but made no mention of it,
choosing a quiet life of celibacy’ (p13).
Hendricks is an example of poor characterisation. We
don’t really get to know Sue Jennings, Luke’s mother, or even Luke, ‘The Fox’
for that matter. We learn a little about Sir Adrian, even delving beneath his
skin. But that’s all. The majority of characters – and there are over 30 listed
(with organizations too) beginning on p303 – are ciphers. There is no emotional
content, so as a reader I didn’t experience any tension when threats were
described to silence Luke. Really, Luke is the main character, the reason for
the story, Hitchcock’s McGuffin, yet he does not come alive, so then the threat
of his death falls flat: it should create concern at least.
Since reading the book, I’ve
looked at the reviews. They fall into two categories: excellent thriller,
couldn’t put it down and the obverse, highly disappointing with a cop-out
ending. I regret to concur with the naysayers.
An aside
I was fascinated to read about
a sleeper agent: ‘The agent … masqueraded as a shopkeeper in the West End of
London whose British name was Burke.
His real name was Dmitri Volkov.’ (p73)
In my Tana Standish psychic
spy novel Mission: Tehran (originally
published 2009, re-published 2017) states:
Yuri – cover-name Neil Tomlinson – had hired the light
cargo aircraft for the day and filed all the flight-plan papers at the nearby
airport. He landed in a field a couple of miles away from Fenner House and
picked up ‘agent Burke’.
Lieutenant Aksakov had already concealed the Escort behind
a hedge and a cluster of trees and thrown the blonde wig and business clothes
into the boot.
She was wearing the more familiar hard-wearing green
cotton tunic and trousers. For this mission she’d left behind in the car’s boot
her water flask, the folding stock version of the Kalashnikov automatic AKM,
three hundred 7.62mm rounds and the P351-M radio set with scrambling and
high-speed transmission apparatus. The vehicle was detonated to explode should
she be unable to retrieve it. Instead, she carried her spring-loaded knife,
spare blades, a Makarov pistol and thirty-two rounds. Six grenades and plastic
explosive completed her weapons load. (p184)
Glossary: Burke - Code-name
chosen because Aksakov specialised in throttling people without leaving a trace
and this transitive verb stems from a nineteenth century murderer’s name.
(p275)
Coincidence, then…
Editor comment:
There are a few instances
where an editor should have intervened; here are just two of them.
1) ‘Though he was more
than ten years older than the man at Yasenevo, he had noted the rising star of
the SVR when he had been deputy chief of MI6.’ (p90) Of course the rising star
of the SVR wasn’t in MI6, though that is the implication here. It should have
read ‘Though he was more than ten years older than the man at Yasenevo, when he had been deputy chief of MI6 he
had noted the rising star of the SVR.’
2) ‘Under the Shah, Israel
had little to fear from Iran…’ (p170) Of course the Shah was never the head of
state of Israel. Perhaps it should have read: ‘Under the Shah, Iran posed
little threat to Israel…’
