Frederick Forsyth shot to fame in America in 1971 as a top thriller writer with the publication of The Day of the Jackal, which dealt with the attempt by a hired killer, "the Jackal," to murder French president Charles de Gaulle. In it, Forsyth meticulously and precisely described how things worked, ranging from the construction of a special rifle to the last detail of the "procedure" the Jackal used to acquire his new passport, a style which was to be the hallmark of his books, a meticulous attention to realistic detail. In researching the book, Forsyth consulted a professional assassin, a passport forger, and an underground armourer. In later best-sellers he improvised car bombs (The Odessa File, 1972), gunrunning (The Dogs of War, 1974), the innards of oil tankers (The Devil's Alternative, 1979), and the assembly of miniature nuclear bombs (The Fourth Protocol, 1984). Icon (1996), a spine-chilling action thriller...