Review | Frederick Forsyth’s swansong The Fox is a worthy, if faintly fogeyish, climax to a thrilling career

The Fox
by Frederick Forsyth
Random House

4/5 stars

When the history of the thriller is written, British author Frederick Forsyth deserves a chapter all to himself. His debut alone, The Day of the Jackal (1971), was enough to cement his reputation as a master of the genre.

The Fox, however, is his last: in a recent interview, Forsyth said he was retiring from the literary game. Instead of his usual calcula­ting anti-heroes who are expert with gun and knife, Forsyth offers a 17-year-old computer genius with Asperger’s who can climb over any firewall. Did I detect a slightly fogeyish complaint about this rising adolescent power: “Jeremy Hendricks, in a world where teen­agers were becoming leading lights, was mature”? Mature or not, he is wanted by almost every government and terrorist organisation, mainly for that old thriller cliché: world domination.

Readers can have fun spot­ting the portraits of figures such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and it is intriguing to notice how much reality seems to be mirroring Forsyth’s art: Russian assassins hunting down targets on British soil? In other respects, Forsyth has not moved with the times. His is a macho world where politically correct sensitivities are flouted, albeit with humour: “Clearly, the Limeys were pretty weird” is a mild example. Time has not withered his skill at pacing or building tension. Top drawer.

Muse of Nightmares
by Laini Taylor
Hodder & Stoughton