Avenger

Frederick Forsyth is back with a vengeance! A heart-stopping thriller of murder, intrigue, deception, and revenge. Attorney Calvin Dexter hangs his shingle in a quiet New Jersey town, has a reasonably successful practice, and takes the hills strong while triathlon training. But Dexter is no ordinary lawyer. On Sundays, he reads the paper and shuffles around his dark, empty house, trying to forget about a life he has lost forever. Until, of course, Dexter reads something in the papers that sends him the necessary signal. Until one of the handful who know of Dexter's other life tries to contact him. For in a world that has forgotten right and wrong, few can settle a score like Cal Dexter can. But the game is changing, and this time CIA agent Kevin McBride must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Amazon. Avenger is the latest international thriller by Frederick Forsyth, who needs no introduction: his past bestsellers in this vein include The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File. The avenger is Calvin Dexter, outwardly a small-town US lawyer, who was shaped into a formidable killing machine by Vietnam. There are horrific flashbacks to his war career as a "Tunnel Rat", fighting the Vietcong at close quarters in their own deadly underground labyrinths. After taking the law into his own hands for a bitter personal revenge on a Central American mobster, Dexter hires out his expertise to grab untouchable criminals from safe havens and deliver them into the clutches of US justice. His latest assignment is the toughest of all. A young American aid worker in fractured Yugoslavia met a revolting death at the hands of an ethnic-cleansing squad led by a Serbian war criminal. The boy's billionaire grandfather can afford an expensive revenge, but the trail seems cold... until, step by step, face-to-face investigation, lucky breaks, unstinting bribery and advanced computer hacking techniques trace the links from Serbia to the United Arab Emirates, a private plane, and a corrupt banana republic where the now very rich villain has the president and secret police on his payroll. Assaulting his massively guarded fortress--whose layers of defence include piranha, attack dogs and sharks deliberately given a taste for blood--would be one hell of a job even if Dexter had surprise on his side. But there are complications in high places. The CIA wants to use that Serbian killer as a stalking-horse in an elaborate operation against Al Qaeda, and issues an urgent warning that the avenger is coming... Dexter plans an elegant, witty and almost bloodless coup, a sting in the style of Leslie Charteris's Saint rather than a Bond-type frontal assault. With the whole country mobilised against him, though, what chance does he have? Dexter, and Forsyth, may surprise you. The author has a knack for making background information vitally interesting: potted life histories of the characters (including big wheels in the FBI and CIA) are almost as compulsively readable as the major action scenes. Surprises and unmaskings continue until the final pages of this superior thriller. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly. "The master is back," the promo goes, "with his best thriller since The Day of the Jackal." A bold statement: while no Jackal, this strong and memorable novel is his best in decades, and as good as The Odessa File and The Dogs of War. It is the story of vigilante Cal Dexter's pursuit of a Serbian warlord into the jungles of the fictional Republic of San Martin. Dexter, former Vietnam tunnel rat, now small-town attorney and clandestine kidnapper of refugees from justice, is after Zoran Zilic, a gangster who has escaped Serbia with a fortune but not before savagely killing an American aid worker who happens to be the grandson of a billionaire mining magnate. It's the magnate who sets in motion the operation against Zilic, first through a man known as "The Tracker," who locates him, then via the Avenger, whose task is to bring Zilic to American justice. But Zilic is protected in his South American jungle compound not only by the best security money can buy but also by a top FBI man who plans to use the warlord to help take out a dangerous terrorist named Usama bin Laden; much of the narrative takes place within weeks of 9/11, and is laced with irony. Forsyth fans won't be surprised that the action, always exciting, is supported by numerous briefings on matters geopolitical, historical and scientific; with Jackal, Forsyth established the now traditional formula of thrillers that educate as well as entertain. The digressions are frequent early on but no page lacks interest and the novel's second half, which focuses on the Avenger's attempted snatch of Zilic, is pure gold. This will hit bestseller lists high and hard and a sequel seems likely. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.