Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
A story of Nazi-hunting, it is brilliant as both a conspiracy and action thriller, drawing on real historical events and turning them into a compelling story. With it intensive research and tightly engineered structure, it set the template for the modern, lightening-paced thriller.
And now, of course, The Odessa File.
Frederick Forsyth is the BMW of thriller writers. I always think if you wanted to learn how to make a car you’d get a BMW and take it apart and put it back together again as many times as you needed to work out how they do it. That’s what I think about Forsyth’s thriller writing.
This one has a great setting in the early 1970s when there were still Nazis everywhere and gold and conspiracy theories. For the time it was very surprising to have a German hero, and a sympathetic one. This book sets the template for the lightening paced thrillers with conspiracies and action, cutting from place to place – now we’re here, now we’re there – information, a kind of gung-ho attitude… It really is the business, that book.
How does he do it?
Well, he perfected the technique of documentary realism, which is much harder than it might look. He puts in lots of contemporary information and realism and gets the balance exactly right. Tom Clancy, for example, puts in much too much detail, but Forsyth builds in the contemporary conspiracy with good editing. Basically, he’s a brilliant editor. Each scene is exactly the right length, hopping from place to place. Technically he’s very accomplished.
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