Frederick Forsyth

Novelist Frederick Forsyth. With the publication of The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Dogs of War, all in the space of three years, critics dubbed Frederick Forsyth a master of the international suspense thriller. The plots of all his stories have been praised for their split-second calculations and for their attention to the mechanical details of, say, mixing the right sunburn salve or creating an atomic bomb. Forsyth turned to novels after a long career as a newspaper and radio reporter throughout Europe and Africa.

Forsyth's latest book, called The Negotiator, imagines the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1990s, several years after the Glasnost reforms. He left home to become a bullfighter, and later worked a journalist in Europe and Africa. Forsyth was once accused of raising money to oust a dictator in Equitorial Guinea -- a claim that was never substantiated.