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A review by testpattern
The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth
3.0
You know how the best parts of Robinson Crusoe are the trips to the wreck, the lists of stores, the account of the building and provisioning of the stockade? This is that sort of boy's adventure process porn writ large. Ostensibly a military thriller about a mercenary-orchestrated coup of a fictional African pocket republic, what The Dogs of War is at heart is the best novel ever written about a shopping trip. If you are into the nuts and bolts of how illegal military operations took place 50 years ago, this book is for you. Your mileage may vary.
The why of the coup, and its bloody actualization bookend the meat of the novel, which is a painstakingly detailed account of the logistics of organizing a small-unit invasion of a country in the Telex and poste-restante days of the turn of the 1970s. Pages are spent describing our hero, Cat Shannon's crisscrossing of Europe in his relentless quest to outfit and transport his gang of merry murderers down the African coast for their date with mayhem, leaving a trail of secret bank accounts, shell corporations, and pounds sterling in his wake. Along the way there are periodic briefings about the history of mercenary operations in Africa, breakdowns of the international arms market, and a frisson of skulduggery and violence for spice.
Forsyth spent years as a journalist in Africa, and wrote this novel with a journalistic approach to research and background. The rogue's gallery of notable mercenaries salting the pages, guys like Black Jack Schramme and Bob Denard, actually participated in the bloody end of post colonial Africa, and the grounding of our characters in this world feels very plausible. Indeed, the book performs as a fairly broad overview into mercenary operations in the middle of the 20th century.
One could fault the characters for being a bit thinly drawn (although character isn't so much the point of the proceedings at hand), but the carefully detailed resumés they are given feel quite plausible. All are veterans who feel more at home in warfare than they do in civilian life. Most of them have criminal records, or stains upon their military records, that preclude them from finding places with conventional armies. Only Vlaminck, the colossal bazooka specialist seems to have much of a life outside of fighting.
The writing is fluent and smooth, with enough detail to make to world feel lived in, but nothing extraneous. One of the ancillary pleasures of the book is its evocation of a pre-PC, pre-digital Europe. Although much about the novel's setting feels very contemporary, much of the action of the book would have been taken care of with burner phones and encrypted emails in a few afternoons rather than the two months and thousands of pounds in travel and hotels that it takes our man Shannon. Less charming to a contemporary reader are the hopelessly dated gender politics of the book. Thankfully, these moments are minimal, since so much of it takes place in a very male world space. Oddly, considering the plot of the book, the handling of Africa and colonialism is a bit more progressive than one would assume. The main characters are respectful of the Africans they work with, and these fictional mercenaries have a moral core, albeit small and pragmatic.
If you like English thrillers from the period, Forsyth is a unique and important voice. This is definitely pulp, but a worthy way to spend an afternoon or two.
The why of the coup, and its bloody actualization bookend the meat of the novel, which is a painstakingly detailed account of the logistics of organizing a small-unit invasion of a country in the Telex and poste-restante days of the turn of the 1970s. Pages are spent describing our hero, Cat Shannon's crisscrossing of Europe in his relentless quest to outfit and transport his gang of merry murderers down the African coast for their date with mayhem, leaving a trail of secret bank accounts, shell corporations, and pounds sterling in his wake. Along the way there are periodic briefings about the history of mercenary operations in Africa, breakdowns of the international arms market, and a frisson of skulduggery and violence for spice.
Forsyth spent years as a journalist in Africa, and wrote this novel with a journalistic approach to research and background. The rogue's gallery of notable mercenaries salting the pages, guys like Black Jack Schramme and Bob Denard, actually participated in the bloody end of post colonial Africa, and the grounding of our characters in this world feels very plausible. Indeed, the book performs as a fairly broad overview into mercenary operations in the middle of the 20th century.
One could fault the characters for being a bit thinly drawn (although character isn't so much the point of the proceedings at hand), but the carefully detailed resumés they are given feel quite plausible. All are veterans who feel more at home in warfare than they do in civilian life. Most of them have criminal records, or stains upon their military records, that preclude them from finding places with conventional armies. Only Vlaminck, the colossal bazooka specialist seems to have much of a life outside of fighting.
The writing is fluent and smooth, with enough detail to make to world feel lived in, but nothing extraneous. One of the ancillary pleasures of the book is its evocation of a pre-PC, pre-digital Europe. Although much about the novel's setting feels very contemporary, much of the action of the book would have been taken care of with burner phones and encrypted emails in a few afternoons rather than the two months and thousands of pounds in travel and hotels that it takes our man Shannon. Less charming to a contemporary reader are the hopelessly dated gender politics of the book. Thankfully, these moments are minimal, since so much of it takes place in a very male world space. Oddly, considering the plot of the book, the handling of Africa and colonialism is a bit more progressive than one would assume. The main characters are respectful of the Africans they work with, and these fictional mercenaries have a moral core, albeit small and pragmatic.
If you like English thrillers from the period, Forsyth is a unique and important voice. This is definitely pulp, but a worthy way to spend an afternoon or two.