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Summary
Summary
Frederick Forsyth, master of the international thriller, retums with an electrifying story of a man of immense power and a conspiracy to crush the President of the United States. Only one man--Forsyth's most unforgettable hero yet--can prevent the plan from succeeding. His name is Quinn. He is the Negotiator.President Cormack is bent on a signing a sweeping U.S.-Soviet disarmament treaty, and the master conspirator is determined to stop him. The kidnapping of a young man on a country road in Oxfordshire is but the first brutal step in the explosive plot engineer the president's destruction. Enter Quinn. Quinn plays the kidnappers like a master musician. . . until, in a shocking tumabout, he discovers that ransom was not their objection after all--and that he has been lured into a cunningly woven web. Now he must draw upon his deepest strengths--to save not only the victim but the entire free world. From the Paperback edition.
Author Notes
Frederick Forsyth was born in Ashford, England on August 25, 1938. At age seventeen, he decided he was ready to start experiencing life for himself, so he left school and traveled to Spain. While there he briefly attended the University of Granada before returning to England and joining the Royal Air Force. He served with the RAF from 1956 to 1958, earning his wings when he was just nineteen years old.
He left the RAF to become a reporter for the Eastern Daily Press, Reuters News Agency, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). While with the BBC, he was sent to Nigeria to cover an uprising in the Biafra region. As he learned more about the conflict, he became sympathetic to the rebel cause. He was pulled from Nigeria and reassigned to London when he reported this viewpoint. Furious, he resigned and returned to Nigeria as a freelance reporter, eventually writing The Biafra Story and later, Emeka, a biography of the rebel leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.
Upon his return to England in 1970, Forsyth began writing fiction. His first novel, The Day of the Jackal, won an Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America. His other works include The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Fourth Protocol, Devil's Alternative, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Fox.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The reader almost despairs of a story getting under way in Forsyth's latest: the situation takes so long to set up, and is mired in such wearisome detail. Finally, after it has been made clear that both a renegade Soviet military group and a fanatical Texan oil baron plan to take over an oil-rich Middle Eastern state for their different twisted reasons, the action begins. The son of the American president (who is about to sign a major arms agreement with Gorbachev himself) is kidnapped, and, despite the best efforts of Quinn, the negotiator, is killed at the very moment of his ransoming. The president is stricken, a takeover of the U.S. government looms, and it looks as if the treaty is doomed. Now it is up to Quinn to find out who was behind the crime, and why. With a plucky and pretty female FBI agent, he scours obscure corners of northern Europe for the perpetrators--always to find them dead just as he arrives. In a cliffhanger of a conclusion, he brings the guilt home to Washington, the president perks up and the world is saved. As always, Forsyth is good at the details (you learn more about Dutch and Belgian road maps than you probably ever wanted to know), keeps a few surprises up his sleeve and writes action scenes more crisply, and with less gore, than Ludlum. But his characterization is flat, and much of The Negotiator is terribly familiar. By far the best parts are the negotiations for the ransoming of the president's son, which generate real tension. BOMC main selection. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Forsyth's first novel in five years, and while it doesn't quite match the white-knuckle tensions of The Day of the Jackal or the baroque plottings of The Devil's Alternative, this big tale of global Realpolitik balancing on the kidnap of a US President's son is still a standout thriller--sophisticated, stingingly suspenseful, and grounded in the author's trademarked attention to authentic detail. As usual, Forsyth builds slowly, seeding multiple plot lines that will eventually detonate the main action. It's 1990, and, independently, right-wing cabals in both the US and Russia are running scared on two counts: with Soviet and US oil reserves near zero, the Arabs will soon own the world economy; and, with a giant arms-reduction treaty okayed by Gorbachev and American President John Cormack, each nation's defense industry is about to go belly-up. The solution? The two cabals conspire to destroy the treaty and then, acting alone, to go after oil by invading Iran (the Russians) and installing a puppet regime in Saudi Arabia (the Americans). How? By emotionally breaking Cormack--and American-Soviet ties--by kidnapping his young son, Simon, a student at Oxford, and then letting slip that the snatch was a Soviet job. Enter Forsyth's lone-wolf hero, veteran hostage negotiator Quinn, drawn out of retirement. Quinn's ballet of wits with the thuggish kidnappers forms the intricate puzzle/centerpiece of the novel's first half; when all of Quinn's efforts go terribly awry, however, Forsyth switches from intellectual to visceral satisfactions as the negotiator becomes the vengeful hunter (aided by a sexy FBI agent) to track down the kidnappers and their bosses across Europe and America--even as President Cormack crumbles and international chaos looms. No one does it better. A crackling good read that's sure to soar up the best-seller lists. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.