Well, of course it isn’t, but it may as well be.

I’ve just realised that I have read about a dozen books since I last updated my blog.  That’s a lot of writing to do if I’m going to comment on them all.

And that’s where this title comes from.  It seems that I find reading pretty easy.  One of the books that I read goes over 500 pages, yet it was polished off in about three days.

Yet I’ll be damned if I can write about all these books.  It seems to me that I don’t have time.  The illusion is that reading seems to be less consumptive of my time than writing about the books would be.  Utter trash, of course, but that’s how it feels.

To get around the problem, I thought I’d write about the books in a single post, add a comment, and that could be it.

I’ll write about them in order of preference, seeing as it would be unfortunate to put potential readers off by inflicting on them a line on the dull book that is Waterloo, by Andrew Uffindell and Michael Corum.

So, here I, eventually, go …

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By Frederick Forsyth

This is the fifth novel written by that master of his trade, Frederick Forsyth. I thoroughly enjoyed the first four, all masterpieces of creativity, research, and imagination.

Forsyth excels in introducing many disparate threads and, over 400 pages, interweaving them into a thrilling conclusion. This one is more of the same.

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By Frederick Forsyth

The fourth book by Frederick Forsyth, who has fast become an author of high renown with me.

I picked up The ODESSA File in February, read it in a couple of days, loved it, and watched the film.

I picked up The Day Of The Jackal in May, read it in a couple of days, loved it, and watched the film.

I picked up The Dogs Of War in June, read it in a couple of days, loved it, and hang my head in shame that I’ve just had to use Wikipedia to confirm that there is a film. That’s one to watch later.

Anyway, it seems that there’s a running theme. And it continued with this one, minus the ‘couple of days’ reading time. Stretch to three for this badboy.

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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.

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By Frederick Forsyth

I’m struggling to think how I heard of this book. As best I recall, Forsyth was interviewed for something political on TV once, which introduced me to his name, and the death of ‘Carlos The Jackal’ and the subsequent reporting of where the name came from, even if this turned out to be untrue, gave me an awareness of the book.

And that was that. I’d never felt a need to get a hold of a copy, I just knew that it was one of those supposed must-read books. (It placed 103rd on 2003’s ‘Big Read’ national survey in Britain to rank literature by popularity.)
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By Frederick Forsyth

Fantastic. 5 out of 5, no question. This is the only book that I have ever read that caused me to gasp with plot twists … and that happened on two occasions.

The story is set in 1960s Germany. A news reporter happens to be on the scene when the body of a suicidee is discovered. A local policeman gives the reporter a diary in case he’d like a couple of details about the man for the report. It’s with this diary that the plot starts: The man is a survivor of a concentration camp in Riga, and documents the sadism of the commandant who, among other things, made the man put his own wife in a mobile gas unit.

The survivor took his own life twenty years later after he saw that commandant visiting the opera, and came to the realisation that the criminals had gotten away with it.

The reporter delves a little deeper into the investigation and uncovers a secret organisation (ODESSA) which exists to protect SS members, using subterfuge, coercion, and murder.

Although he can’t think why, the reporter feels driven to track down this Nazi.

Meticulously researched and featuring a cast of famous people and events of that time, this is absolutely rivetting. I won’t lie and say I couldn’t put it down; however, I got through all 400 pages in a 24-hour period and am now downloading the film. This is a book of the highest order.