The Afghan (The Afghan - Frederick Forsyth)

Member Name: GMTP09

Product:	The Afghan - Frederick Forsyth
Date:	07/09/09 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: thriller

Disadvantages: full of implausible coincidences

-- Background --

Frederick Forsyth is a well known English writer with several successful best selling novels including 'the Day of the Jackal'. I have enjoyed his other books enormously and looked forward to reading The Afghan with the usual anticipation.

-- The Plot --

The book starts with the July 7/7 London bombing. Colonel Mike Martin is an ex-SAS officer with a talent for speaking Arabic like a native. He can even impersonate an Arab due to his dark colouring. The Western intelligence agencies accidentally find out about a sinister plot code named Al-Isra by the terrorists. They are unable to determine the target at this point. The British and American authorities ask Mike Martin to infilterate Al Qaeda after intensive training to help him impersonate a Taliban leader who is currently imprisoned in Guantanamo. What the sinister plot is not revealed until much later in the book.

This story moves from UK to US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Middle East. The author builds the characters of Martin and the Afghan he has to impersonate with his usual style and attention to detail. There is meticulous detail about how the Taliban came to being, the problems in Afghanistan, the funding of Al-Qaeda etc. The mission is very dangerous and one is kept guessing about the target of the terrorist plot.

-- My opinion about the novel --

He does build up the suspense very well but the many coincidences that keep occuring in the book make it disappointing. The book gets off to a good start sadly the story does not move as quickly as some of his other novels. I found, his habit of moving from what is happening in Pakistan one minute to talking about something in Britain for next 20 odd pages was distracting.

I would suggest borrow this from the library and use your hard earned money for something else.

costs £5.49 on Amazon
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Corgi Books
ISBN-13: 978-0552155045

Summary: worth a read