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A review by simonmee
Avenger by Frederick Forsyth
1.0
Avenger, the darling of the bulk buy bins, seemed like a bit of dumb ol' fun. But it wanders into some preachy territory.
Just a bit of Dumb ol’ Fun?
No.
There’s a story in there, if you strip it right down to its dumbest and its funnest parts. Serbian gangsters/nationalists murder an American in Bosnia. Years later that American’s wealthy grandfather hires an “Avenger” to track down the head Serb. The CIA has its own interests and intervenes to protect the Serb. If you distilled this book to 100 pages, you’d have an efficient novella. If you slapped James Bond’s name on the lead, it’d be one of his better ones.
But getting there is Such. Incredibly. Heavy. Going. The book suffers from excessive characterisation. Significant sections of the book are set aside to go through tangential histories of the leads. Sure, those passages/pages/chapters/30% of the book are narrowly defensible as relevant to the story, but they keep derailing the narrative rather than being interesting interludes.
The structure also creates an uneveness. The final third is "too easy" as Forsyth rushes through the denouement and fails to take the time to build up tension in each scene.
There’s also a couple of things below that suggest Forsyth isn’t exactly a people person.
No time to chat
Forsyth avoids dialogue where he can and, when he can’t, the conversations are brutally efficient:
Person 1: Give me information
Person 2: [Conveys information]/[Refuses to convey information]
...even between characters that are apparently decades long bosom buddies.
Hot Daughter Blues
”By the summer of 1991 Amanda Jane Dexter was sixteen and knockout attractive. The Naples-descended Marozzi genes had given her a figure to cause a bishop to kick a hole in a stained-glass window. The blond Anglo-Saxon lineage of Dexter endowed her with a face like the young Bardot”
You know how I complained about excessive characterisation? Well... sometimes Forsyth forgets about any at all, particularly women. The Avenger is motivated in part by the death of his daughter. That really hot one. That we know nothing else about. Instead, we get a lengthy discourse about bamboo-snake ridden Vietnamese tunnels.
The Avenger’s wife also dies. It is the Avenger’s fault. Forsyth, who is writing the story, is unaware of this.
The deep end [of the paddling pool]
Forsyth is fiction for the non-fiction reader. He loves to delve into weapons, legislative history and biting political commentary, like the European intervention in the break up of Yugoslavia and that “The Russians are nothing if not the most racist people on earth."
I think the intent is that by reading his stories, you are initiated into the inner sanctum of geopolitical knowledge, and can expect invitations to those clubs where future Prime Ministers stick appendages into pigs.
...but anyway... ...Forsyth has an opinion on 9/11:
"He recalled Father Dominic Xavier who had taxed him with a moral problem. ‘A man is coming at you, with intent to kill you. He has a knife. His total reach is four feet. You have the right of self-defence. You have no shield, but you have a spear. Its reach is nine feet. Do you lunge, or wait?’ He would put pupil against pupil, each tasked to argue the opposite viewpoint. Devereaux never hesitated. The greater good against the lesser evil."
Now Avenger is fiction. But it’s clear to me that Forsyth wants to recreate that moral problem for the reader:
"Yes, the disgusting Serb had killed one American. Somewhere out there was a man who had killed fifty, and more to come."
This disgusting Serb is part of a plan to stop Osama Bin Laden pre 9/11. Ignore the gaping plot hole that a Serbian genocidal maniac might actually prefer 9/11 happened. Here's a hint to my main criticism: Forsyth is writing about 9/11.
Any number of events of varying ruthlessness could have stopped 9/11. Just because Forsyth created a scenario with a bad guy in it doesn't make him a moral philosopher. Read the book's moral problem again:
"With intent to kill you." and "He has a knife."
It's a tough choice that's not really a tough choice. Both answers are "right" in that you could feel comfortable either way. Wait for the bad guy's action, or strike first because everyone knows he's the bad guy. And sure, Osama was bad guy and maybe another bad guy might have stopped him. But, with respect to the problem he's irrelevant. He killed before 9/11 and we know he did 9/11.
So, asking the question another way, would you really trust a shadowy government organisation that deals with mass murderers when it tells you each time that "He meant to kill you" and "He had a knife"? Because it won't stop with Osama.
In case you're wondering whether I'm asking a hypothetical, I note that "knife" and "intent" really did start becoming "yellowcake uranium from Niger", "military aged males" and "American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and 8 year old Nawar al-Awlaki" (all killed in separate attacks without the slimmest of considerations to due process). And those are just the things they tell us.
What I'm saying is that when it comes to the knife and intent to kill,
- I don't know;
- You don't know; and
- Forsyth doesn't know.
Using 9/11 is a tawdry trick. If you don't have rules about how you establish knives and intent before you act, then you are the one with the knife and the intent.
I may not know much about philosophy, but I can smell bullshit, and this book is shovelling a whole lot of it.
Put it in the recycling bin.
Just a bit of Dumb ol’ Fun?
No.
There’s a story in there, if you strip it right down to its dumbest and its funnest parts. Serbian gangsters/nationalists murder an American in Bosnia. Years later that American’s wealthy grandfather hires an “Avenger” to track down the head Serb. The CIA has its own interests and intervenes to protect the Serb. If you distilled this book to 100 pages, you’d have an efficient novella. If you slapped James Bond’s name on the lead, it’d be one of his better ones.
But getting there is Such. Incredibly. Heavy. Going. The book suffers from excessive characterisation. Significant sections of the book are set aside to go through tangential histories of the leads. Sure, those passages/pages/chapters/30% of the book are narrowly defensible as relevant to the story, but they keep derailing the narrative rather than being interesting interludes.
The structure also creates an uneveness. The final third is "too easy" as Forsyth rushes through the denouement and fails to take the time to build up tension in each scene.
There’s also a couple of things below that suggest Forsyth isn’t exactly a people person.
No time to chat
Forsyth avoids dialogue where he can and, when he can’t, the conversations are brutally efficient:
Person 1: Give me information
Person 2: [Conveys information]/[Refuses to convey information]
...even between characters that are apparently decades long bosom buddies.
Hot Daughter Blues
”By the summer of 1991 Amanda Jane Dexter was sixteen and knockout attractive. The Naples-descended Marozzi genes had given her a figure to cause a bishop to kick a hole in a stained-glass window. The blond Anglo-Saxon lineage of Dexter endowed her with a face like the young Bardot”
You know how I complained about excessive characterisation? Well... sometimes Forsyth forgets about any at all, particularly women. The Avenger is motivated in part by the death of his daughter. That really hot one. That we know nothing else about. Instead, we get a lengthy discourse about bamboo-snake ridden Vietnamese tunnels.
The Avenger’s wife also dies. It is the Avenger’s fault. Forsyth, who is writing the story, is unaware of this.
The deep end [of the paddling pool]
Forsyth is fiction for the non-fiction reader. He loves to delve into weapons, legislative history and biting political commentary, like the European intervention in the break up of Yugoslavia and that “The Russians are nothing if not the most racist people on earth."
I think the intent is that by reading his stories, you are initiated into the inner sanctum of geopolitical knowledge, and can expect invitations to those clubs where future Prime Ministers stick appendages into pigs.
...but anyway... ...Forsyth has an opinion on 9/11:
"He recalled Father Dominic Xavier who had taxed him with a moral problem. ‘A man is coming at you, with intent to kill you. He has a knife. His total reach is four feet. You have the right of self-defence. You have no shield, but you have a spear. Its reach is nine feet. Do you lunge, or wait?’ He would put pupil against pupil, each tasked to argue the opposite viewpoint. Devereaux never hesitated. The greater good against the lesser evil."
Now Avenger is fiction. But it’s clear to me that Forsyth wants to recreate that moral problem for the reader:
"Yes, the disgusting Serb had killed one American. Somewhere out there was a man who had killed fifty, and more to come."
This disgusting Serb is part of a plan to stop Osama Bin Laden pre 9/11. Ignore the gaping plot hole that a Serbian genocidal maniac might actually prefer 9/11 happened. Here's a hint to my main criticism: Forsyth is writing about 9/11.
Any number of events of varying ruthlessness could have stopped 9/11. Just because Forsyth created a scenario with a bad guy in it doesn't make him a moral philosopher. Read the book's moral problem again:
"With intent to kill you." and "He has a knife."
It's a tough choice that's not really a tough choice. Both answers are "right" in that you could feel comfortable either way. Wait for the bad guy's action, or strike first because everyone knows he's the bad guy. And sure, Osama was bad guy and maybe another bad guy might have stopped him. But, with respect to the problem he's irrelevant. He killed before 9/11 and we know he did 9/11.
So, asking the question another way, would you really trust a shadowy government organisation that deals with mass murderers when it tells you each time that "He meant to kill you" and "He had a knife"? Because it won't stop with Osama.
In case you're wondering whether I'm asking a hypothetical, I note that "knife" and "intent" really did start becoming "yellowcake uranium from Niger", "military aged males" and "American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and 8 year old Nawar al-Awlaki" (all killed in separate attacks without the slimmest of considerations to due process). And those are just the things they tell us.
What I'm saying is that when it comes to the knife and intent to kill,
- I don't know;
- You don't know; and
- Forsyth doesn't know.
Using 9/11 is a tawdry trick. If you don't have rules about how you establish knives and intent before you act, then you are the one with the knife and the intent.
I may not know much about philosophy, but I can smell bullshit, and this book is shovelling a whole lot of it.
Put it in the recycling bin.