Frederick Forsyth has died | Hacker News Reader

Frederick Forsyth has died

theguardian.com

63 pointsTomte19 comments

I read many of his books growing up. His collections of short stories are fantastic. No Comebacks[1] in particular is phenomenal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Comebacks

His "The Shepherd" is amazing. Linking a PDF of it (it's 29 pages, and 100% worth reading) and not the wikipedia page for spoiler reasons: https://www.cessna150152.com/ubbthreads/attachments/13553-Fr...

Saving it up for the weekend. Thanks for sharing!

>Forsyth was a staunch supporter of Brexit, becoming a patron of Brexit campaign group Better Off Out, and wrote of his scepticism of climate change in his Daily Express column.

Nobody is perfect :-(

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Forsyth

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0287046/

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.frederickforsyth.co...

My first impression was Frederick Forsyth is still alive?? remembering him from classics that seemed ancient when I read them decades ago. Think Ian Fleming and James Bond type books. Toast to him though, great talent nevertheless. RIP.

For those interested: Ian Fleming (1908-1964), Frederick Forsyth (1938-2025). So roughly a generation apart, but Forsyth lived to 84, while Fleming died at 56 (all those cigarettes?).

Great books, though not for the faint of heart

The Fist of God is probably one of my favourites.

(I mean, his early books, I really can't recommend his sequel to, erm, The Phantom of the Opera)

I enjoy his writing style, and particularly his willingness to indulge in paragraphs of dryly humorous details, usually of the technical and operational varieties. For all their flaws, he and a few others (e.g. Alistair MacLean) have a particular flavor of "very competent protagonist relying on their wits and Very Particular Set of Skills" that other authors can't execute quite as well.

> very competent protagonist relying on their wits and Very Particular Set of Skills

Writing these characters without creating Mary or Marty Sues is really damn hard.

If you like this sort of thing, a novel I would heartily recommend is "Kolymsky Heights" by a much neglected (and long dead) author Lionel Davidson.

The Guardian has a short piece from 2014 that describes the plot. Great setup and a particular sort of cultural and linguistic skillset :

"Porter, however, is descended from Canadian Inuits, who remain – physically, ethnically and culturally – virtually identical to their Siberian counterparts, despite the decades-long political rift between the two."

From : https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/03/book...

Great great novel. I thought of it for my earlier comment in this thread (though decided not to mention), as I definitely see Forsyth as an influence on the detailed planning in KH.

Ach, great writer of operational background stories; his logistical build-up takes up almost the entirety of Dogs of War for instance. Strangely riveting accumulation of preparation notes considering it would probably be unenticing if describing, say, conference planning rather than a military coup!

I'm not sure earlier books like that would pass these days without considerable liberal angst; that one for instance celebrates a certain lost kind of man of action with a brute uncompromising view of the mercenary perspective of the world.

For lovers of intelligent action novels though like me, he's one of those writers I always considered a sure bet when taking a punt with an Audible credit. RIP.

Dogs of War was good enough for it to be the basis for multiple attempted mercenary led coups. Hoare's in the Seychelles failed because his forces went in by plane instead of boat and met the problems which Forsyth foresaw. Denard's guys (if I remember correctly) were given copies of the book with bookmarks to indicate what to do next.

To be fair, Dogs of War was based on Forsyth’s experience covering real-life mercenaries in the Biafra war.

Fun fact, he started out as a war journalist and got fired for playing favorites and slanting his coverage towards one side. IIRC, he only started writing as a fallback after that.

What an author; I discovered Day of the Jackal when I was 8-10 (not sure). Reading it remains one of my most memorable experiences of my childhood[1].

I genuinely hope someone thought to play this when he expired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGd6CdtOqEE

[1] It took a lot of convincing by my older brother that there book was, indeed, fiction. TBH, even now, I'm pretty certain it was all plausible.

I've read The Devil's Alternative when I was maybe 14, and I still think that it was a pretty solid book - exciting plots, well-researched and plausible. Maybe similar to Michael Crichton (who sadly died pretty young), whose Dino Park I read around the same time. Both of them, I think, were in the upper range of "thriller" novels.

I'll be having a toast to him. The man's character development may have been a bit wooden and even absurd at times, but the procedural descriptions were curiously captivating, and the plots were just wonderful.

Day of The Jackal is a novel I can read again and again across the years without ever getting finally bored of it. Dogs of War is almost as good and The Avenger is wonderful from start to finish, to name just a few praiseworthy examples.

Also The Fist of God and Icon, although the ending of Icon is a bit rushed.

Another exciting cold war thriller is the Devil's Alternative.

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