10 bestselling, cold-blooded political thrillers by Frederick Forsyth you must read

Across a career spanning over five decades, Forsyth perfected the art of putting the spycraft on the page. His books dig into geopolitical crises with a reporter’s clarity and a field agent’s paranoia — mercenary coups in Africa, Nazi fugitives protected by secret networks, Islamic terror cells traced by digital breadcrumbs. If John le Carré focused on slow-burn spy games, Robert Ludlum drew on action and global conspiracies, Forsyth kept things stripped down: real-world detail, fast plots, and characters who work like parts in a mission. The Federal breaks down 10 of his most interesting works, deconstructing the plots, the politics, and what makes them popular with readers across generations:

1. The Day of the Jackal (1971): Picture this: mid‑1960s France, a country on edge. Earlier, in 1962, Gen. Charles de Gaulle survived an OAS assassination ambush at Petit‑Clamart. The pro‑French Army Secret Organization (OAS) was furious at de Gaulle for granting Algerian independence. With their leaders caught or executed, the remaining plotters decide only a professional killer — utterly unknown to French police — can succeed. They hire an anonymous English hitman, code‑named “the Jackal,” for half a million dollars.

The bulk of the story is the Jackal’s meticulous preparation to gun down de Gaulle and the frantic manhunt that follows. He forges documents, steals identities, builds a custom suppressed sniper rifle and plots every detail of the assassination. Meanwhile, veteran French security officer Claude Lebel pieces together the mystery. When the Jackal finally lies in wait on de Gaulle’s Bastille Day parade, his rifle jams at the last second. A chase ensues through Paris streets; cornered, the assassin is shot dead by Lebel. In sharp, news‑style fashion Forsyth narrates both sides — the cold efficiency of the mercenary and the tense counter‑intel response — capturing the political backdrop of postcolonial France and the OAS’s blind rage.

2. The Odessa File (1972): Late 1960s West Germany. Peter Miller, a young crime reporter, stumbles on a Holocaust survivor’s diary detailing SS atrocities in Riga. The entries finger SS Captain Eduard Roschmann — the notorious “Butcher of Riga” — now hiding under an alias. Miller’s investigation unfolds like a thriller news story. He learns of ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen), the secret network spirit of Nazi war criminals helping fugitives escape and continuing with terror plots. With help from Simon Wiesenthal and a vigilante Mossad agent (“Josef”) Miller infiltrates ODESSA by posing as a former SS officer. ODESSA turns out to be plotting a grim scheme: using German missile‑guidance tech and biological weapons in Egypt to obliterate Israel.

Miller narrowly survives a bomb on his car, then confronts Roschmann face‑to‑face. He forces Roschmann to read the diary testimony of Miller’s own father’s murder. Instead of a shootout, Miller insists on arresting Roschmann — but Roschmann escapes to Argentina. Later we learn West German authorities, prodded by Israel, shut down the Nazi missile plant — foiling the ODESSA biowarfare plan. The novel ends with Miller vindicated, ODESSA busted (though it survives underground), and the main Nazi terrorist still at large. Forsyth weaves in real Cold War threads (Israeli intelligence vs. fleeing Nazis) to give the tale a gritty realism.

3. The Dogs of War (1974): Forsyth turns to Africa’s mercenary wars. Former Royal Marine Cat Shannon and his crack European mercenary team are savages with a code. They retire after a lost Biafra campaign, but are pulled back in by greed and politics. A ruthless British mining tycoon, Sir James Manson, hears of a vast platinum deposit on the tiny dictatorship of Zangaro (a fictional Equatorial Guinea). Zangaro’s Marxist‑mad president Kimba is Soviet‑backed and insane, so Manson schemes to overthrow him and install a pliant puppet who’ll hand over the mine for a pittance. Not telling Shannon about Soviet involvement, Manson sends Shannon to assemble the team and plan a coup.

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4. The Shepherd (1975): A sudden shift in tone: Forsyth’s Christmas novella is a haunting aviation tale. On Christmas Eve 1957 a young RAF pilot flies a de Havilland Vampire jet from Germany to England, low on fuel and shrouded in North Sea fog. Instruments dead, he zigs and zags to attract radar notice, hoping a “shepherd” flight will guide him. Then, out of the mist, a WWII De Havilland Mosquito bomber appears — no registered radar contact, just a lone Mosquito tailing him. The old pilot uses hand signals to steer the Vampire to a disused airstrip where runway lights inexplicably come on. The Vampire coasts to a safe landing.

Expecting a big rescue, he finds only a lone flight lieutenant and a 70‑year‑old mess steward named Joe. They explain that RAF Merriam St. George was closed — no one was supposed to be flying that night. Shockingly, the mess steward tells a story: during WWII, a legendary Mosquito pilot named John Kavanaugh (with the initials “JK” on the nose) used to roam storms, shepherding lost bombers to safety. Suddenly Joe notes: Kavanaugh died on Christmas Eve 1943 in the North Sea. The pilot deduces: the Mosquito that saved him was Kavanaugh’s ghost. This eerie little story, often read on radio at Christmas, ends on that revelation. Forsyth delivers it in plainspoken style — it reads like a campfire account — fitting the theme of unexplained holiday miracles.

5. The Fourth Protocol (1984): In this Cold War nail‑biter, Forsyth goes full espionage. It opens with an MI5 drama in 1986 Britain. British defector Kim Philby and the Soviet GRU craft “Plan Aurora” to swing the next UK election to Labour by staging a “false flag” nuclear blast. The scheme: a suitcase nuke’s parts are smuggled into England and assembled near RAF Bentwaters. The bomb is to be detonated a week before polling day, and blamed on an American warhead accident. The resulting panic and anti‑US sentiment (plus Labour’s stance on unilateral disarmament) are supposed to deliver victory to the left. MI5 officer John Preston uncovers something odd when he finds polonium discs hidden on a Soviet courier. He suspects a nuclear plot but is stonewalled by superiors.

Eventually he and a rash SAS raid discover the assembled bomb just hours from detonation. Special forces kill the saboteur Petrofsky, thwarting the explosion. In the aftermath, truth leaches out: the bomb never went off (thanks to a double‑cross in Moscow), and Britain narrowly avoids catastrophe. The Cold War context — election campaigning, anti‑nuke movements, ultra‑secret intel games — pervades every step. Forsyth makes it feel like an investigative report, with tense scenes (MI5 bigwigs arguing disinformation) and documentary detail. In the final pages, Harcourt‑Smith (the MI5 deputy who bungled the case) is forced out, and Preston quietly resigns (going into security work). The ending reflects the era’s fear: even with the bomb stopped, the operatives pay a price in ruined careers as the political machinery churns on.

6. The Fist of God (1994): Now it’s the Gulf War era. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq has invaded Kuwait — and possibly built a secret super‑weapon. Forsyth combines two storylines like feature and sidebar: SAS Major Mike Martin is sent undercover in Iraq, and the Mossad is chasing “Jericho,” a top Iraqi source of intel. Martin, fluent in Arabic, befriends the Israelis’ asset and transmits the tip on an unfinished Iraqi nuke. In Washington and London the Medusa intelligence committee concludes Iraq can’t yet make a bomb with its centrifuges, so the worst is nerve gas (prompting a US nuclear warning on Baghdad). But the picture darkens when a rogue US pilot bombs an Iraqi factory and photos reveal Calutron chambers — implying Saddam was finishing uranium enrichment.

This means a bomb was assembled somewhere. Jericho leads British intelligence to the canyon of a giant underground cannon: “Project Babylon.” Iraq’s plan is chilling: they call the one‑shot nuclear weapon “The Fist of God” and intend to blast it out of the cannon into Saudi Arabia the moment the ground war starts. If that fails, 100,000 coalition troops would die and deadly fallout would drift into Iran. Martin barely escapes as Iraqi counter‑intel closes in, then volunteers for a HALO drop with an SAS strike team to blow up the supergun. In a nerve‑jarring raid, American F-15s obliterate the cannon before launch, and Gen. Schwarzkopf orders the liberation of Kuwait to begin, oblivious to how close disaster loomed. Meanwhile Mossad finishes the subplot: they recover Jericho’s Swiss bank bounty (Operation Joshua) and ultimately unmask Jericho as Brig. Omar Khatib. In classic Forsyth fashion, the final pages confirm Saddam’s true “Fist” never fired. The novel reads like a war documentary — from Baghdad checkpoints to SAS briefings — which proves that the grounded it in real 1991 events.

7. The Art of the Matter (2001): A break from Forsyth’s usual warfare, this is a short contemporary thriller set in the exclusive world of fine art auctions. Forsyth exposes the greed and scheme behind elegant facades. A bright young appraiser at a top London auction house discovers what appears to be a previously unknown Old Master painting — a potential masterpiece that could fetch millions. But the company CEO, lusting for glory, swoops in and arrogantly claims the find as his own.

Enraged at the theft of credit, the appraiser joins forces with the painting’s rightful, long‑ignored owner. Together they plot a flawless double‑cross. Using clever forgery and insider cunning, they set a trap that humiliates the CEO and hammers a lesson to art‑world egos. Forsyth doesn’t skimp on detail — he details the auction mechanics and the art market’s snobbery — but tells the tale like a hard‑nosed exposé. By the end, the once‑venerated auctioneer’s prestige lies in ruins, the “elegant world of the Old Masters” laid bare for the ruse.

8. The Afghan (2006): Early 2000s — the dawn of the War on Terror. British and American intelligence hear rumours of a colossal al‑Qaeda plot, but they have zero human intel (“We know nothing — no who, no where, no when”). Enter a wild solution: the CIA and MI6 extract a shadowy figure known as “the Afghan,” Izmat Khan, a former Taliban commander locked up in Gitmo. They pair him with Colonel Mike Martin — a battle‑hardened British spy fluent in Pashto. The plan: turn Martin into a lookalike of Khan. Training him to be Arabic‑fluent and tweaking his appearance, they literally “pass off a Westerner as an Arab” into the al‑Qaeda world. Martin is injected back inside the terror network under Khan’s name, tasked with sniffing out “Operation al‑Isra.” Intelligence on a codename “al‑Isra” (referencing Mohammad’s Night Journey) surfaces from MI6/CIA/ISI discoveries, hinting at a plot beyond imagination.

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Forsyth then follows Martin as an embedded agent through Pakistan and Afghanistan, meeting jihadist inner circles. The pace is break‑neck: Martin discovers that “al‑Isra” is a plan to bomb multiple international airliners to shower New York, London and Washington with debris. He races against time, sabotage in hand, to stop the midair massacres. The climax unravels like a joint operation report: Martin commandeers Pashtun allies, fights gunmen, and manages to avert disaster just before takeoff. In the end, London and D.C. awaken none the wiser, but Martin — like a journalist on a dangerous beat — reflects on the cost: a colleague betrayed, a nation’s secrets defended. Forsyth weaves in Pakistan’s ISI motives, CIA politics and Afghanistan’s terrain to ground the thriller. The style remains terse and urgent, the world “as scary as headlines” suggests the jacket blurb.

9. The Cobra (2010): End of the 2000s. Forsyth tackles the global drug trade. In this political thriller an unnamed US President (clearly Barack Obama with a Kenyan father) and British Prime Minister (a David Cameron stand‑in) are shaken by a personal tragedy: a White House maid’s grandson dies of a heroin overdose. They decide to wage an all‑out war on cocaine. Enter Paul Devereaux, a legendary ex‑CIA Director known from Forsyth’s earlier thriller, Avenger (2003). Devereaux is given carte blanche to smash the cartels any way he likes. He recruits old Vietnam vet and lawyer Cal Dexter to run a high‑tech task force. Dex’s team outfits Q‑ships and retrofitted planes to hunt cocaine shipments on the high seas and in the air. They knock out cartels’ supply and expose corrupt officials — suddenly global cocaine vanishes. To break the logjam Devereaux fabricates intelligence to pit the drug lords against each other.

Gang wars erupt across Colombia, Mexico, the US and Europe, with mayhem in the streets. But as violence spirals, Washington orders Devereaux to pull back. Unwilling to quit, Devereaux cuts a dirty deal with one kingpin: he promises fake delivery of all captured cocaine. In a denouement ripped from a heist report, Devereaux tips Dex to the stash — only it’s a setup. The agent commander (the Buccaneer jet ace) ambushes the actual conveyance, blowing it sky-high. In the final twist (the epilogue reads like a dispatch), Devereaux is himself assassinated by Don Diego Esteban, the spurned drug lord exacting “revenge for a broken deal”. The Cobra closes with Devereaux’s body recovered in Colombia and cartels in disarray — the war on drugs left a trail of ash. Forsyth’s punchy, clipped prose reads like a government dossier: multilateral summit meets black‑ops mission, complete with cameo nods to Mossad, SAS and news headlines (the epilogue even quotes “the Cobra never sleeps,” referring to Winston Churchill’s mantra for Nazi Germany).

10. The Kill List (2013): Post‑9/11 global drama. Forsyth introduces a mysterious Islamic extremist known only as “the Preacher,” whose online sermons inspire a string of high‑profile assassinations of Western officials. The US and UK governments, desperate, place the Preacher on a secret “kill list” of top targets. They assign this to TOSA (Technical Operations Support Activity), a shadowy joint agency. Its best hunter is the Tracker — a tough ex‑Marine lieutenant colonel whose own father was murdered by the Preacher’s followers. The Tracker works with Ariel, a brilliant young hacker, to trace the Preacher’s broadcasts. Their sleuthing finds the signal is uplinked via a satellite link in Somalia, but points back to a sophisticated British‑Pakistani engineer who was the Preacher’s childhood friend. With Mossad intel, they also have a mole (“Opal”) in Somalia close to the Preacher’s inner circle.

Meanwhile, Somali jihadists kidnap a Swedish national’s son during a cargo raid. The climax is straight out of an action report: the Preacher, rattled by a fake expose video, arranges a desert ritual murder on live stream to rally his followers. The Tracker parachutes in with a Pathfinder team to intercept. In a classic knife fight finale, the Tracker rescues Opal and the boy, kills the sheikh extortionist, and finally slays the Preacher himself, ending the bloodshed. Forsyth threads in today’s issues — internet radicalisation, Blackwater‑style rendition ops, pirate‑lord terrorism — but delivers it like breaking‑news. By the end, the Preacher’s sermons are silenced and innocents saved. Readers finish thinking they’ve just read an intelligence debriefing: the stakes, the strategy and the swift surgical takedown are all laid out in crisp, journalistic detail.