Style
Forsyth eschews psychological complexity in favour of meticulous plotting, based on detailed factual research. His books are full of information about the technical details of such subjects as money laundering, gun running and identity theft. His novels read like investigative journalism in fictional guise. His moral vision is a harsh one: the world is made up of predators and prey, and only the strong survive.
Forsyth's novels typically show the ways in which spies, gangsters, assassins, mercenaries, diplomats, business leaders and politicians go about their business behind the scenes; the sort of things that the average reader would not suspect while reading a simple headline. The Jackal does not just go out and shoot at Charles de Gaulle: he does meticulous research on the man at the library of the British Museum; obtains papers for his false identities; travels around Paris to find a good location for a sniper's nest; and buys and tests his weapons.
Also a subtle twist at the end of the novel can reveal that a lot more was going on than the reader initially suspected: Cat Shannon, the central figure of The Dogs of War, turns out to have had his own agenda all the time; Adam Munro of The Devil's Alternative finds out that he was not a player but a pawn to people in high places; in The Odessa File, the reporter's true motivation is revealed at the end, and a number of events in Icon turn out to have been committed by people other than those who the reader had been led to suppose. In Avenger, one of the events that allows the Avenger to escape is unexplained until the last few paragraphs.
Forsyth's novels also feature famous personalities and political leaders as characters—The Day of the Jackal features the French president Charles de Gaulle and his interior minister, Roger Frey, who heads the government search for the assassin—the opening chapter is based on an actual attempt by the OAS to kill de Gaulle. The Odessa File features the real-life Nazi Eduard Roschmann and Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The Fourth Protocol and Icon involve several chapters indirectly featuring former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and former US president George H. W. Bush. Although unnamed or of fictional identity, the leader of the Soviet Union is portrayed as the lead antagonist in several novels. Other real life characters are thinly disguised. For example, real life suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is portrayed as "Vladimir Bout" in Avenger.
Read more about this topic: Frederick Forsyth
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Everything ponderous, viscous, and solemnly clumsy, all long- winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among Germans—forgive me the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, being a reflection of the “good old time” to which it belongs, and a reflection of German taste at a time when there still was a “German taste”Ma rococo taste in moribus et artibus.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)