The master is back! Freddie Forsyth is the author of so many exciting, well-written novels that another should be no surprise. In this case, he takes the former Soviet Union as the setting for his tale.
A man is found floating on a skiff, far from land in the Black Sea. He has escaped the Soviet Union and, thanks to the ship that he is picked up by, he is soon safely tucked up in a hospital bed in Turkey. Word of this gets out to a young man with a burning desire to make Russia suffer for his father’s subject people. He now takes leave and flies
to meet the man at his hospital bed. Now, he begins to plot his revenge on Russia.
As ever, Forsyth is impeccable in his description of places and events. He can tell you how many paces it takes to cross a bridge in Moscow, or the décor inside the Kremlin. However, it is his attention to detail when talking of events at the level of international power politics, or the thoughts and feelings of a peasant tilling his fields which is so impressive. We need to bear in mind that he is a trained journalist who has been in hotspots in his time. He isn’t just an armchair ...
