The Dogs Of War
By Frederick Forsyth
I loved the two books by FF that I’d already read. They were the two that I’d already heard about, the incomporable “The Day Of The Jackal” and well-known “The ODESSA File“.
When I had the opportunity to bag myself another one for a paltry pound, I couldn’t resist.
Forsyth’s novels (as far as I’m qualified to say anyway, having not read all of them) stand out for their meticulous research. It’s not enough that the bad guy just happens to appear when you’re following the travails of the good guy; he has to go into great detail explaining the methods that were used to explain how he came to be in the position that he was in.
This is exactly what we see here. It’s an insight in to the plotting of a coup. The place is Zangaro, a fictional banana republic in which a geologist’s report indicates a hidden treasure of untouched platinum worth ten billion dollars lies buried.
This attracts the attention of his employer, a British billionaire, who decides, quite understandably, that he wants it.
The plot is hitched, and Forsyth follows it in great detail. A mercernary is hired to do the armed work, investigating the political, economic, and geographic landscape of the country, amassing a team of trusted veterans to storm the place, and getting hold of the necessary weapons.
On the other side, Sir James Manson has his underlings set up the business side of things. They trick an old lady into selling her shares in a long-dead company, do some dirty business work (within the scope of Swiss law) to covertly gain control of other companies without seeming to have a monopoly, and decide to install a puppet president, who will sign an exclusive mining deal with this firm before they put him in power.
Everything is going swimmingly in this story of dirty business and the attack is unleashed. Unpredictable to the businessmen is that mercernaries are, well, mercernaries, and they’ve taken care to install their own president, and the plotters must sit back, money wasted, and never breathe a word of it again.
I shouldn’t have to say it: This book was a fantastic read, to the point that I was tempted to pull a sickie rather than attend a black-tie do I had travelled to London to attend, so that I could stay in the hotel room and carry on reading 
Tags: Frederick Forsyth