Spy Novelist 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.

The '60s sitcom was often a one-joke affair; the film's starry-eyed geek has room for nuance. You can make a case for both Maxes, but critic David Edelstein misses the tube's lovable boob. Anne Hathaway's Agent 99, now ... that's another matter.

Alan Furst's best-selling spy thrillers (Kingdom of Shadows, Night Shadows, The Polish Officer) play out in the brooding, tumultuous Europe of the pre-World War II years, offering an intimate, insider portrait of an escalating crisis in which the players can't always see the implications of the game. Critic-at-large John Powers explains why he's a fan.