The Kill List: A Terrorism Thriller

by Frederick Forsyth

Overview

An extraordinary cutting-edge suspense novel from the "king of the pack" (The Washington Times), #1 New York Times bestselling author Frederick Forsyth.

In northern Virginia, a secret agency named TOSA (Technical Operations Support Activity) has one mission: to track, find, and kill those so dangerous to the United States that they are on a short, very close-held document known as the Kill List.

Now a new name has been added: a terrorist of frightening effectiveness called the Preacher, who radicalizes young Muslims living abroad to carry out assassinations. Unfortunately for him, one of his targets is a retired Marine general, whose son is TOSA’s top tracker of men.

The Preacher has made it personal—and now the hunt is on….

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451467638
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/05/2014
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Frederick Forsyth is the author of sixteen novels and short story collections, from The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, and The Dogs of War to, most recently, The Afghan and The Cobra. A former pilot and print and television reporter for Reuters and the BBC, he has had five movies and a television miniseries made from his works. In 2012, he won the Diamond Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association for a career of sustained excellence. He lives in Buckinghamshire, England.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Action sequences are TIPSY WITH TESTOSTERONE.”—The New York Times

“A story that’s AS CURRENT AS TOMORROW’S HEADLINES.”—Mobile Press-Register

“A HIGH-STAKES THRILLER…The Kill List is intense to the very end.”—Midwest Book Review

“Forsyth’s new thriller proves he has lost none of his powers…[He] remains THE MASTER OF HIS TRADE.”—Daily Express (UK)

Editorial Reviews

Action sequences are TIPSY WITH TESTOSTERONE.”—The New York Times

“A story that’s AS CURRENT AS TOMORROW’S HEADLINES.”—Mobile Press-Register

“A HIGH-STAKES THRILLER…The Kill List is intense to the very end.”—Midwest Book Review

“Forsyth’s new thriller proves he has lost none of his powers…[He] remains THE MASTER OF HIS TRADE.”—Daily Express (UK)

From the Publisher

This subpar war-on-terror thriller from Diamond Dagger Award–winner Forsyth, with its unknowable outcome, offers less suspense than his Edgar-winning debut, The Day of the Jackal, where the ending is never in doubt. A Muslim extremist, known only as the Preacher, is spreading the message of violent jihad via English-language videos, and his acolytes have begun targeting public officials in the U.S. and the U.K. The job of stopping him falls to Kit Carson, an ex-Marine now part of a super-secret agency in Virginia called Technical Operations Support Activity. Carson, who’s known as the Tracker, assembles an assortment of allies straight out of a Mission Impossible script, including a reclusive teenager who’s a master hacker employed to trace the Preacher. Some readers will wonder why Forsyth bothered to give Carson a personal incentive to complete the mission. Others will find a lack of memorable characters an obstacle to genuine engagement. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

More than 40 years after he gave us the Jackal, Forsyth gives us the Preacher, a masked jihadi extremist whose videos are radicalizing Muslims in the U.S. and England into killing public officials, law enforcement officers and the like. The Preacher tops a special list of enemies marked for death by a covert U.S. government agency. The man assigned the kill is decorated former Marine general Christopher "Kit" Carson, aka The Tracker, a fluent speaker of Arabic who has experience eliminating al-Qaeda leaders. Carson has a personal investment in the operation: the Preacher was responsible for the death of his father. Having had his life saved by the Tracker several years ago in Afghanistan, the agency's director, "Gray Fox," has a special investment in him. When the government's best computer experts are unable to penetrate the Preacher's secret Internet protocol address, the Tracker recruits Roger Kendrick, an agoraphobic teenage computer whiz holed up in his room in Virginia. Drooling over the super-sophisticated equipment he's given, he quickly determines he is up against the Preacher's own computer expert, dubbed the Troll, and creates a cyber alter ego to penetrate the Preacher's fan base. From there, the kid is a few steps away from planting malware that will enable the Tracker to determine who the Preacher is and where he is based—not Pakistan, where a cohort of his operates, or Yemen, as was thought, but Somalia. Here, Forsyth is as methodical—at times as colorless—as his subjects. But he powers his plot with a clean efficiency, providing an absorbing account of the clockwork moves and split-second decisions required to close in on and dispatch the enemy. Strong descriptions of the settings add to the book's appeal. Inspired by an actual kill list, Forsyth's latest thriller is, like Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, ready-made for the screen.

Kirkus Reviews