The Deceiver

"The Deceiver" consists of four first-rate stories dealing with Cold War era espionage. While the characters (other than historical figures) and the incidents are presumably fictional, these stories have the usual Forsyth air of authenticity. These stories are uniformly excellent. Forsyth artfully uses the format of an administrative hearing for a superlative British Cold War intelligence officer to tell the four separate stories that make up this collection. It works. These stories involve the old Soviet Union, the IRA, the Libyans, international criminals, and the Cubans. All well-told. Highly recommended.

Frederick Forsyth has penned a most unusual collection of spy tales here. In fact four episodes from the colorful career of Sam McCready, British spy master, are provided and well-crafted. The four tales cover about 10 years and every terrorist and criminal hub in the world, including Libya, Cuba, USSR, the IRA, and East Germany. McCready has been deemed expendable, due to his unorthodox and outrageous tactics, in a post Cold War era by very high level political and civil service leaders. The typical story line for a prehistoric cold war operative runs like this: Operate a high level Russian spy for many years in an uneasy collaboration with the CIA. Send an overweight, aged, hard drinking West German spy into East Germany to collect a package. With the help of retired smugglers, go yourself into East Germany to retrieve the package when the West German suffers a complete break-down. Of course this needs to be done without any official sanction from the British or West German, while the KGB is also on the trail of the Russian general. Clearly these tactics have no place in the post cold war 1990's, a time of seeming safety and tranquility at least until Iraq invades Kuwait in August 1990. The fundamental premise here is that McCready has a legal right to a deparmental hearing as a sort of protest of his forced retirement. In the hearing the four spy tales are told. This is a very unusual construct and may not appeal to all. The tales are all good, but not good enough to stand alone as Forsyth novels, and are strangely unrelated, other than that they are four cases successfully solved by our hero. This is also a book for those like me, who love the technical minutae and operational details of the covert trade.

This book had everything- suspense, action, psychological thrills, and clever plot twists. And, to boot, there are four stories that each are independent of the other, yet are interwoven in that they trace career highlights of the Deceiver.Forsyth's attention to detail is startling in light of the complexity of the stories he tells. He is one of the few espionage-slash-action writers I can stomach, because his style is so vivid and clean. This book is excellent and is every bit as good as Jackal and Odessa File.

Fun reading, hard to put dow

"The deciever" is the best. Three short stories compile the best of the deciever's career with British inteligence. The stories span the cold war and take the deciever all around the world. This book is to good to describe. A must read.